Director: Ridley Scott
Stars: Denzel Washington, Paul Mescal, Connie Nielsen
Put off by it’s perma-furrowed brow, stodgy pace and bullish displays of machismo, 18-year-old me wasn’t all that impressed by Ridley Scott’s first foray into ruthless Roman combat. I was more of a Gladi-hater if you will. Indeed, the stain of that youthful impression meant that it wasn’t until just last week – some 23 years later – that I dug deep and re-watched his Oscar-conquering epic for the first time since rejecting it all those years ago. I wasn’t nearly so dismissive. It’s quite fun, actually! Though many of those criticisms still stick to a degree. Sacrilege as it may be to some, to this viewer Gladiator is sturdy, mid-tier Scott through and through.
So my expectations for this long-gestated sequel were mixed from the outset. But late-period Ridley has managed to be interesting and/or wildly entertaining even when he’s flailed a bit. It’s been hard to predict movie-to-movie if we’re gonna get campy Scott or all-out-vicious Scott. With Gladiator II, it transpires, we get him switch-hitting in both modes. But, rest assured, when it comes down to overall tone and sensibility we’re far closer to a House of Gucci than a The Last Duel. This IP extension is high-wire soap opera writ large and – to a surprising degree – a flagrant retread of the first movie.
Remember that floppy haired little shit Lucius from the first film? Well he’s all grown up now, living in exile and fighting against the Roman imperialist march. It is in this capacity that we meet him (a beefed up Paul Mescal), now going by the name Hanno, fending off Pedro Pascal’s General Acacius in Northern Africa circa 200AD.
Rome is in decline. Maximus’ promise of a new order hasn’t come to fruition, and the empire is under the spurious tutelage of a pair of pale-faced pantomime Joffreys; Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger). They’re twins (despite there being a clear 5-year age gap between them). Lucius/Hanno gets himself captured after witnessing the death of his warrior wife at Acacius’ hand and, naturally enough, swears vengeance, becoming a relentlessly boring meat-sack of pure fury. Cannily ambitious slave-peddler Macrinus (Denzel Washington) sees opportunity in the proto-gladiator’s ignominious violence, and brings him to the capital and the infamous Colosseum…
Yes, it’s an almost carbon-copy of Gladiator, and to Scott’s credit he motors through all of this stuff at a pace, no doubt aware that he’s shot it all once already a quarter of a century ago. So as not to openly appear out of ideas, the majority of Gladiator II‘s combat sequences supplant humans for CG animals, pitting Hanno and his enslaved brethren against mad monkeys, a riled-up rhino and even a bunch of sharks in the much-vaunted but ultimately underwhelming battle of the barges. You sort of want all this stuff to be the wantonly silly bits… but they’re mostly the more functional elements of the film. All the sneaky back-stabbing and political drudgery happening in the background has a surreptitious way of becoming the far more interesting and enjoyable side of the story, often leaving Mescal and his one-note fury out of shot.
This is almost entirely down to Washington, who waltzes through the movie stealing scene after scene in an act of thievery so brazen that – much like his character – it beggars belief that he’s allowed to get away with it. His performance is arguably the most calculated element of the whole thing as, for a little while at least, it really doesn’t seem as though he’s doing much more than what’s expected of him. But as Gladiator II unfurls – and as any sense of interest in Paul Mescal dies – Washington comes into his own and takes over, well, everything. Having almost worn out it’s welcome, Scott’s sequel finds a much-needed second wind some 90 minutes into it’s running time, helped no end by a scene in which Washington’s Macrinus holds court while whirling a severed head around the place. It’s not only marvelous but it moves us into (somewhat) new territory.
If this helps buoy the charge to the finish line, the whole is more of a mixed report in other ways. The decision to make Lucius’ parentage such an explicit link to the first film seems like it ought to be a strength, but it becomes arguably its biggest weakness. Revealing Lucius as the love child of Maximus and Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) is actively harmful to the integrity of the first movie, which placed Maximus’ fidelity to his murdered wife and child central to his every conviction. It’s a rare case where you could argue that a sequel manages to do damage to its progenitor, muddying its sense of purity and dousing it in hypocrisy.
That’s if you’re precious about it. As intimated at the top, I’m not. Taken at a more casual remove, this is a deeply silly, historically woolly slice of Hollywood excess, one that succeeds a lot of the time on the fact of it’s own nostalgia. We’ve not really had one of these in a while. By which I don’t mean a Gladiator film, but rather the kind of ’00s swords and sandals gung-ho sprawlers powered in equal measure by homoeroticism and wild testosterone. Granted, Scott triggered their very resurgence 24 years ago. Quite whether we need another cycle – or whether Gladiator II has the wherewithal to power one – is another matter.
David Scarpa’s script doesn’t seem sure it’s up to the job. On more than one occasion it outright apologises for not having anything memorable or poetic to say, and so it goes for the movie’s cod speechifying; never quite as rousing or pithy as the eminently quotable first film. It’s sick of corrupt institutions. It’s faith in anything better is, like ours, on the wane. The action set pieces are similarly more functional than formidable. Scott’s opening squabble at the Nubia city gates feels like a rehash of moments from his forgettable crusader Kingdom of Heaven. Still, there’s enough here to pass muster, especially whenever the aforementioned Washington or legacy matriarch Nielsen are summoned to elevate the material.
Once all the battling and bloodshed is over it’s a self-confident ‘thumbs sideways’ for this one. We are quite entertained.
The Lost Highway Hotel 