‘Gladiator II’ leaves us only slightly entertained
Somewhere between the gladiator battle with sharks in the Roman Colosseum and the coronation of a monkey as the Emperor’s Counsel, you start to think maybe Ridley Scott is taking the piss. We don’t recall the Russell Crowe Gladiator reaching for such cray-cray laughs.
But Gladiator II, set 16 years after the original took place, takes place amid a decaying Roman Empire. Maximus is dead, and his dream of a “just” Rome based on love and charity is now replaced by bigger and bigger spectacles—bread and circuses for the unruly (and now increasingly grumpy) masses. You want feral baboons fighting slaves? You got it!
Two corrupt and seemingly inbred twins, Geta and Caracalla (Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger), run this den of sleaze, where Acacius (Pedro Pascal) returns from the wars with a batch of war prisoners—including Paul Mescal as the aggrieved Lucius—and wily operator Marcinus (Denzel Washington) waits in the wings.
I was never really a huge fan of the original Gladiator—I thought its richly detailed scale and production masked a thin sword-and-sandals plot —but it did have one main weapon: Crowe’s commanding performance as Maximus. Here, Mescal exudes strength and thoughtfulness, but never really lifts off the screen for me. The fight scenes are typically state-of-the-art, and Ridley Scott’s world-building of Ancient Rome is jaw-dropping as before. So it has to be the Hamlet-like nature of the lead here that holds Gladiator II back a bit.
Even with a twistier story (by David Scarpa) than the first, it feels like less than before. At times overblown and overdone (and overlong), it’s glossy nonsense for the masses. Scott brings back Joaquin Phoenix’s trademark (though historically inaccurate) thumbs-down gesture; hell, he even brings back original characters played by Connie Nielsen and Derek Jacobi, and resurrects the same Hans Zimmer theme sung by Lisa Gerrard several times through the story, telling us the director is fan-servicing like mad. But how can a movie that—knowingly—stands in the shadow of the original every really take the reins?
The one who does take the reins is Washington, pivoting his early shadings of an august, somewhat seedy arms dealer and occasional counsel to Geta and Caracalla, the Beavis and Butt-head of Ancient Rome, into something more dynamic and interesting.
At least for a while.
As Lucius/Mescal works up his slave fan base (they respect his ability to take a bite out of a feral baboon in the Colosseum), he also questions who’s who in this rogue’s gallery of Ostia, Rome. We learn about Nielsen’s connection to Lucius, and Pascal can only be noble and righteous, ‘cuz after all, he’s Pedro Pascal; so it’s all about Mescal’s slow transformation into a new kind of hero and the rise of Washington’s Marcinus, who’s part Iago and part Training Day. (Yes, the dynamic between “-al,” “-al” and “-el” drives this rehashed tale.)
Director Scott returns somewhat to the bloody frissons and macabre humor of his Hannibal, where Anthony Hopkins gleefully fed Ray Liotta his own pan-seared brains. Bloody decapitations, and removal of many other body parts, signals that the director is after cheap thrills, more so than the original Gladiator, which somehow rose to the buoyant level of Crowe’s commitment to character.
But really, Gladiator has led us down the path to 300, and thus to a seemingly endless slew of blood-drenched battlefield epics that unfailingly remind us, in stentorian tones, that “What we do today… echoes in eternity!” As Hollywood pap goes, it’s pretty resilient, but I’d probably prefer to dig a bit deeper into Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations for life lessons. Plus, Mescal’s final speech is kinda… meh.
So, for your richly deserved entertainment in these times, you can sit for 2:27 and watch Ridley Scott crank up the Decline of the Roman Empire one more time; or you could check out Francis Ford Coppola’s stunning and lurid Megalopolis, which—while a mega-flop-olis at the box office—depicts the collapse of a modern Roman empire with a bit more freshness and surprise up its sleeve.
