The Gladiators (The Peace Game)

Sweden:
‘... a vague and partly connected film, a debate film which in its revolutionary conclusions mumbles and falters instead of speaking clearly ... as in the previous ‘Privilege’ it also happens that Watkins uses construction and caricature rather than the brain ... Peter Watkins is a director who has better opinions than thoughts.’ (Aftonbladet) ‘

... an extremely unsuccessful film - now and then a magnificent failure. Peter Watkins is not a fool, but he is naive and politically a vague thinker. Evidently, he thinks right, though it often becomes wrong ... a rather square political film; and as entertainment it is simply boring.’ (Expressen)

‘The great message in ‘The Gladiators’ is that all known social and political systems are just as reprehensible ... Transferred into pictures this is deadly boring, a natural result of Watkins’ miserable way of making films as an illustration of theses decided upon beforehand.’ (Svenska Dagbladet)

‘The audience wants someone to cheer for - and at least they want to have fun. In ‘The Gladiators’ they only meet Peter Watkins’ pessimistic solemnity which is not even balanced by a bit of black humour ... However cleverly this data-operated gladiator game has been devised, it also has a severe lack of logic. The game is supposed to be witnessed by a television audience all over the world. Such an audience would never allow the inhuman slaughter of the English soldier and the Chinese girl, whose “crime” is that they have not stuck to the rules of the game. Seen deeply, that is the blind stain of Watkins: he underestimates the feelings of the audience. But I cannot help being positive about Peter Watkins. He is still only 33 years old.’ (Kvällposten)‘

... Watkins has not aimed at an ordinary feature film ... and the film does not resemble any other film ... The message of ‘The Gladiators’ is something that you can completely sympathize with, and therefore the film is definitely interesting and captivating.’ (Uppsala Nya Tidning)

Britain:
‘Peter Watkins’ political and satirical ideas have always struck me as naive, from the bludgeoning of ‘The War Game’ to the disastrous ‘Privilege’. And his new film (‘The Gladiators’) is certainly also naive... The satire tends to be cheap. But the central metaphor is formidably strong, and Watkins’ meticulous expertise with arms and men in conflict and violence, his attention to detail and his careful drilling of a substantially non-actor cast, background the metaphor well ... It is a substantial film, cruel and precise ... It is, mercifully, open-ended. We draw our own conclusions from the horrors we see.’ (The Scotsman)

‘Soldierly language, no doubt, is one reason why ‘The Peace Game’ is showing at the Contentale and not at some more central place in the Leicester Square district. But it should certainly be showing somewhere central and having a lot of fuss made about it. It’s highly intelligent and thought-provoking ... two more qualities, I suppose, that make it a commercial risk ... A cynical perhaps gloomy moral; but the film is so well done that it’s stimulating, not depressing.’ (Punch)

‘The trouble, as with Mr. Watkins’ earlier ‘The War Game’, is not that he is not talented (technically he has very real gifts) or even that his basic idea is unworkable, but that he takes for granted as public property a whole set of more or less private myths which he therefore apparently feels no need to establish, argue out for us, or even elementarily to expound. His position is as remote and special as Blake’s in his prophetic books, but with no corresponding burning integrity of vision ...’ (The Times)

‘Peter Watkins is a director I admire enormously. Running through his work are an anger and a passionate concern with the central problems of our society that isolate him from the bulk of his British contemporaries. They rarely seek to change society through their films: Watkins is trying to do it all the time. For that reason he has inevitably met with a good deal of obloquy ... And now comes ‘The Peace Game’, made in Sweden and rigorously continuing Watkins’ clear-eyed exploration of the direction our society is taking ... You may not agree with everything in it but it is still a film I strongly urge you to see.’ (The Illustrated London News)

‘Peter Watkins’ film seemed just as ham-handed to me on the second viewing as on the first: a lugubrious and clumsy satire which sheds less light on the problems of aggression and violence than it does on the obsessions and personal anguish of Mr. Watkins.’ (Observer)

‘An ingenious idea, but director Peter Watkins ... has developed it with naivety and such crude characterisation that it is impossible to take it seriously even as a moral fable ... The film moves so slowly that you can practically hear it snoring ...’ (Daily Express)

USA:
‘The Gladiators’ is the finest Peter Watkins film to date ... it won the grand prize at the International Science Film festival in Trieste but was rejected by the New York Film Festival, which this year chose to run his trashily hysterical anti-American American film, ‘Punishment Park’. ‘The Gladiators’ happens not only to be a beautifully constructed suspense thriller but also one of the finest anti-war films of recent years, a cool and cogent commentary on international militarism, the entrenchment of The System and, with piercing bitterness, the ultimate sameness of systems ... there is subtlety and sophistication in the construction, a steady undergrowth of suspense and a morally devastating conclusion to be reached - all by way of imaginative cinema and beautiful technique.’ (New York Magazine)

France:
‘Peter Watkins ne cherche à faire plaisir à personne. On le jugera utopiste et mauvais esprit. Moi, petite tête, je trouve son film beau et courageux, et je lui pardonne bien volontiers quelques lenteurs, rachetées par un humour glacé, très britannique, qui a fait ma joie. Un film qui dans sa transposition romanesque est d’une vérité aveuglante. Car le cri universal n’est pas: mort à la guerre, mais bien mort aux pacifistes! Merci Peter Watkins, vous avez en moi un spectateur fidèle et un supporter acharné.’ (Le Canard enchaîné)