Incannerax What a waste of my time!!!

Ensofter Overrated and overhyped

ScoobyWell Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

rowmorg One of the greatest things about this obscure and lengthy German/Italian TV video is that it contains none of the over-famous and over-paid Hollywood faces that plague us in the usual video-store fare. Another huge advantage is that, being set in Ancient Rome, it will never feature a hideous American gas-guzzling automobile, neither will characters use a telephone or wear mass-produced off-the-peg clothing. It also eschews those tedious set-pieces with a "cast of thousands" that the Hollywood egomaniacs feel obliged to deliver. Instead, it is a love story between two young people raised in rustic simplicity in a country villa. Their love is interrupted by fate, and the rest is 90 minutes of turmoil as Claudius the healthy peasant boy becomes Nero the tortured idealist who in despair ultimately dies by his own hand.I gather from other comments that the story has little historical accuracy, but neither did Ben Hur nor The Ten Commandments. Hans Matheson as Nero makes a decent job of a difficult role. He transitions from simple country boy to deranged paladin effectively enough considering the complications of episodic scripting and Italian TV boss Berlusconi's feeble brain-power. When Poppea drugged him, I felt sorry: he would obviously never be the same again, and indeed, he did condemn the lover of his youth, Acte (popular German TV actress Rike Schmid), to death as a Christian, but more probably because she was taller than he. This is for fans of films set in Ancient Rome, who do not have PhDs in Roman history. As such it works fine: settle back for three hours of togas and treachery and take no notice of the self-appointed experts.

bb-f-d-caesar As a ravenous devourer of all films set in the ancient world, but especially the Roman ones, as soon as I found out this and "Augustus" are part of a larger programme, I had to uncover the remaining pieces to be filmed. As culled from the production company website, they are as follows:Miniseries completed: Augusto/Augustus and Nerone/Nero Miniseries in production: San Pietro/Saint Peter, Pompei/Pompeii, Costantino/Constantine and La Caduta dell'Impero/The fall of the empire.So it would appear that the series will not focus only on 'imperium' per se, that is emperors and all that. But instead, it will feature some historical events and important characters peripheral to Rome proper (in this case, St. Peter). Much as I don't like the Christian flicks, one cannot look at all Rome's history and shrug it off. But, for my part, I look forward to the Constantine piece. TThe man hasn't been 'filmed' much and I cannot locate the one that I know of on DVD anywhere.

Spike-in-Berlin "Nero" as the title of the movie is in Germany is a another attempt to show one of the most interesting Roman emperors, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, better known as Nero. Although this attempt at least tried to show a more historic accurate Nero than the amusing but completely fictitious Nero Peter Ustinov played in "Quo Vadis!" it still is a major failure. And to those IMDb-commentators who still believe that Sueton and Tacitus propaganda is true, please read a book about Nero that was published less than 20 years ago. Nero did NOT burn Rome, this is proved! He did not murder Britannicus. He did not torture, kill and maim for pleasure, he was the first emperor who BANNED the gladiator fights. The movie still shows a lot of mistakes, errors and is by the way made in a really cheap style, especially the sets were cheap and unconvincing, the palace looking like some villa, the city itself looked like..well like a cheap set. The acting was between good and sub-par, the music nearly insignificant and the movie soon deteriorated after Nero became emperor to a rushed, bad edited mess without any clear narrative structure. So there still is the potential for an epic biography of Nero that shows the true Nero, who was one of the best emperors who ruled Rome, despite the lies of Sueton et al.

gradyharp The miniseries made of television that examines the highlights of the Roman Empire ('Imperium: Augustus' was the first). While the sets and costumes and flavor and atmosphere of that phenomenal period in history is well captured and the production qualities are strong, the historical accuracy is diminished by 'cleaning up' the facts and rearranging dates and incidents to make a 'Hollywood version' of the Roman Empire.Given the fact that this is not a biopic but rather an entertainment, IMPERIUM: NERO is interesting, if long at 192 minutes, to watch in continuity. Nero was born in 37 AD and died in 68 AD and during those 31 years much changed in Rome. We first met Nero as a child 'abolished' to a life with the slaves by the infighting among the Emperors - Caligula (John Simm) and Claudius (Massimo Dapporto) - and the Senate - namely Porridus (Simón Andreu), Burrus (Maurizio Donadoni), and Septimus (Ian Richardson). While living among the people we are informed that Nero (a fine Hans Matheson) falls in love with commoner slave Acte (Rike Schmid) and when misdeeds in Rome call him back to power (through the wily and devious guidance of his mother Agrippina (Laura Morante, the true star of this film), Nero is forced to marry well and forswear his love for Acte. Once proclaimed Emperor, Nero does some bad things such as having his brother Britannicus (Francesco Venditti) killed, etc and begins to descend into madness instead of fulfilling his vision of creating an empire for the people. His teachers include wise Seneca (Matthias Habich) and commoner Etius (Jochen Horst) and his loyal friends include Tegellinus (Mario Opinato). Once on his downward spiral Nero begins to murder and destroy those close to him and finally burns the city of Rome to prepare the ground for his grand palace and city, all the while playing on is lyre.If this all sounds wicked and cruel, then it is probably better that the story didn't 'flesh out' the true obese, schizophrenic, megalomaniacal, sexually dysfunctional creature that was Nero. You need the history books to see what a hideous tyrant he was, a man who placed his acting and circus skills above all else, castrating young boys who resembled his mother to marry while also marrying the prostitute Poppea (Elisa Tovati). But the major problem with this version of Nero's tenure is the emphasis on the new sect called Christians. Indeed, even the apostle Paul is brought in to cleanse the proceedings and seep evangelicalism into the story to help it end! But for the script as written (by Paul Billing and Francesco Contaldo) director Paul Marcus brings off a fascinating though long image of the Roman Empire. Not for Roman scholars perhaps, but for those who enjoy historically based epics, this NERO should do nicely Grady Harp