tchad49 These are oddly generous reviews for an awful movie that could have been great. It is painful to see the great Peter O'Toole and Charlotte Rampling surrounded by so many high school-quality actors (with the possible exception of Benjamin Sadler) and especially the other two main actresses. And yet, if you are interested in Roman history, it is worth a look.Pacing is generally good. But the overall tone is too melodramatic. Everyone but O'Toole and Rampling are just declaiming their lines. This is made worse by the awkward and unnecessary dubbing. In the hands of a better film director, and a better casting director, the plot and attention to historical accuracy gave it potential.

RobertM525 My wife and I couldn't even finish the film. Truly, it was rather painful.First, the historical accuracy is compromised not so much by the events themselves as the ridiculous one-dimensionality of the characters. For instance, Augustus takes the "burden" of power only with great reluctance. Indeed, he is portrayed as if he's some sort of great humanist and believer in democracy.Second, the camp! My lord, the dialog is horrifically bad. I recall the soap opera my mother watched when I was a child having better dialog than this. The constant exposition and pontificating grates upon the ears like fingernails on chalkboard. Ugh. (Okay, I exaggerate a bit, but the dialog truly is bad.) The HBO series Rome is superior for no other reason than that its characters were at least believable, regardless of their historicity.Rome was also wise enough to know they couldn't stage epic battle scenes. The creators of this film did not. When Caesar attacks Munda, the battle scene is practically farcical.I will grant that the costumes are perfectly good. The sets are fine, though their CGI backdrops can be a bit jarring at times. The sound is bad, though—both in terms of the music, the foley work, and the dubbing of so many of the side characters.Anyway, it's completely not worth renting. As a history major, I was hoping for an alternative approach to Augustus than HBO's Rome, which, I feel, failed to capture his overall "feel" quite as well as they did Caesar or Antony. Instead, I should have just stuck to my reading.

Mart Sander This is a voice of a person, who just finished watching the second season of Rome, almost at one go, and grabbed the opportunity to see "what happened next" - this film conveniently takes off where Rome ends. If you find Rome an abomination, a foul mouthed screw-fest of little historical accuracy, then you might enjoy Imperium: Augustus. But, if you feel Rome is a good thing, if you enjoy the complicated intrigue, the ambiance of decadence and the work of the actors, then Imperium will obviously appear to you as an overly timid, superfluous and tedious soap opera with not many redeeming factors.There are some actors who for my taste look somewhat better than these in Rome. I especially disliked Rome's image of Cleopatra as a drug-soaked sex addict. There must have been a great deal of strength and dignity in that woman, and the actress in Imperium suits the part much better. O'Toole and Rampling are good, and so are some others. But then... If you have come to know - and love - Atia as the super cool bitch, you'll find the depiction of her in Imperium - as a tear-jerking mother goose in an apron - absolutely ridiculous. There are supposed to be some bitchy characters in Imperium, but these actresses rely heavily upon staring at the men and nothing much more. You'll find no interesting female characters in this epic. There's also the painfully comic Maecenas, whom we see as a screeching drag queen, even though there is little historical evidence that he was such (he's once referred to as "being effeminate in his pleasures" in the annals).The interiors are rather meager and rely on clichés upon clichés. Cleopatra's big hall looks like something out of a computer game or a children's play room in an Egyptian theme park. There's a looooooooot of really poor 3D graphics, not up to 2003 standards.The action is presented as a series of flashbacks the aged Augustus is reliving. So we get a quick look at some historical events, some of which are presented well, whereas some are not. An disproportional amount of time is wasted to show Livia as the "eternal flame" of Augustus. This affair doesn't sizzle for even a moment, the dialog is superlame and everything is seasoned with tacky tear-inducing musical score. Whatever amount of reality the show aims to capture, every last shred of it is destroyed by the dry synchronized dubbing (most of the actors are non English speakers).Everything is lukewarm in this epic. True, there are more historical accuracies than in Rome, but dramatically speaking, it's plain boring. The characters lack depth and the dialog sharpness. Camera-work is often reduced to static shots, and lighting offers nothing to please your eye.There's really no-one to love and no-one to hate in Imperium. Regardless of whether you liked or disliked Rome, there are much better films and miniseries around. Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire would be one thing I recommend.

imdb-4215 I disagree with other reviewers who were quite negative on this production. I quite enjoyed it and will recommend it for anyone interested in classical history. Admittedly, some of the acting was not first-rate, especially among the non native English speaking actors. I had the feeling their lines were dubbed in.That aside, I liked the way it recounted the life of Augustus in the form of a long conversation with his daughter Julia with flashbacks. Yes, some of the historical details were a bit off. But it's tempting to compare it with other productions such as I Claudius and Cleopatra (the latter played even more loosely with historical fact). This production explored why Augustus, Julia, Livia, and others did what they did.Others complained it was too long; on the contrary, I would like to have it longer and fill more detail in some of the years in Augustus's life that were not covered or glossed over.The recreations of the Forum, the Curia, and other locations were the best I've seen. Unlike other productions such as Gladiator, the producers strives for accuracy rather than a Rome of the imagination and exaggeration.