Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

and not only. a film who creates one of many Nerone's portraits. not extraordinary but decent. only sin - the fear of Hans Matheson to explore new solutions for create his role more than copy of other emperor's representations. but he does a beautiful role, not real profound but honest, powerful and realistic. like many historical movies, the accuracy is not the best point and, in many scenes, Nerone seems be only sketch. but it is a good choice for an evening after work day, as mixture of history and crumbs of fairy tale, remembering Quo Vadis and the representation of the Roman emperor in different novels and in cinema. sure, the stereotypes are not the inspired ingredients and the story of Nerone could be more a story "ad usum Delphini" but the result is far to be bad.

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.

This movie was good. It was both entertaining (although long at 3 hours) and refreshing.I have seen a lot of movies on the Roman Empire, including Augustus (to which I also found great). Although I only have mild university level knowledge on the history of the Roman Republic and Empire, I know very little of Nero, so I watch Nero from an ignorant point of view.Gladiator had little historical background yet was hailed and given high ratings and great reviews. Although that is a story, one would assume Nero (as well as Augustus) to be an accurate day-to-day recount of the lives of these Emperors. True, there are some parts that seem out-of-date, far-fetched, and alienated from what seems to be 'truth', but you can't hide that this is a story.I found huge gaps in Augustus, Rome, and Julius Caesar, but I loved every second of them, and as far as I'm concerned, Imperium: Nero is better than Augustus (even though I studied him for quite some time).If you haven't seen Nero, it's a good movie, and a great night at home with some ice cream, or popcorn! Most of the reviewers cast "hog-wash", but use Historical Inaccuracies as their main attack, then again, "Gladiator" wasn't the most historically accurate film ever made either.6.7/10

Sorry if I disappoint anyone about what I am about to say to this made for TV movie. But, I paid money for the movie and turned out this movie is disaster. The directing is really awfully bad. But, after I looked up its information here, I realized there might be reasons for the low quality of directing and producing. Maybe they don't have budget, but anyway, Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility had little money too but it turned out a hit. The director in this movie did really bad job in telling the story and the movie couldn't even keep up a rational continuity in itself. It keeps pulling me outta scenes. Maybe someone need to work hard on story line/ board. The dubbed sound is also awfully bad. My god.... Normally, I would appreciate every movie because behind it lie ideas and imaginations of an individual. but, this time I am just mad , "I really wanna hit something HARD." ...Just don't do the job if someone can't fulfill it to its best. Bad arts (its' not even art, what is it? )really hurt people.