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Back in the Golden Age of the Hollywood epic, composer Miklós Rózsa lavished much scholarly research on his scores for Quo Vadis (1951), Ben-Hur (1959), El Cid (1961) and others, gracing those movies with music that had as its wellspring authentic (or at least authentic-sounding) melodies from the period. For Ridley Scott s revival of the Roman epic, Gladiator, Hans Zimmer eschews such learned academia in favour of his own more contemporary, wall-of-sound approach (honed to perfection on movies like Tony Scott s Crimson Tide). In truth, no one is quite sure what Roman music sounded like, and Zimmer s unscholarly rock music background is temperamentally better suited to Scott s all-action movie anyway.Gladiator s score is a stylistic conflation of some audacity, incorporating lavish synthesised, percussive action sequences (a Zimmer trademark), ethnic instrumentation including Spanish guitar, Chinese dulcimer and Armenian duduk, and--most suprisingly of all for Zimmer--unabashed plagiarism of Wagner (his cue The Might of Rome is Siegfried s Funeral March in all but name) and Holst (The Battle and The Barbarian Horde lean heavily on Mars). Vocalist and co-composer Lisa Gerrard (fresh from working on The Insider, coincidentally also starring fellow-Australian Russell Crowe) adds her ethereal vocalisms to the music s more intimate scenes (Sorrow and Elysium for example). Her contribution brings an exotic, Oriental flavour to a score that in its broad musical canvas reflects the movie s depiction of the vast scope of the Roman Empire. If not the equal of Zimmer s career best work on The Thin Red Line (1998), this is still a hugely entertaining and diverse soundtrack. --Mark Walker