I’d been looking forward to Gladiator II, hoping director Ridley Scott would deliver an epic-scaled movie that provided a healthy dose of sword-and- sandal escapism while paying homage to an idealized version of bygone Roman virtues: honor and strength.
What I experienced was a mixture of involvement and disappointment, a movie that prioritizes spectacle as it labors to refresh the structure of the original movie, which made its debut 20 years ago.
Gone, aside from a few references in flashback, is Russell Crowe as Maximus, an obvious necessity prompted by the fact that Maximus died in the first installment. He's replaced by Paul Mescal as Lucius, who we first meet on the eve of the Roman siege of Numidia, a North African Berber kingdom.
David Scarpa’s screenplay introduces Lucius as an adult who was taken in by North African "barbarians” (as the Romans refer to its non-Roman subjects) as a child. The Numidians are ripe for conquest by Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), a loyal Roman who’s devoted to imperial expansion and to the republican ways of the past.
Early on, we get the whole Scott enchilada: big ships, catapulted fire balls, gory hand-to-hand combat, scaled walls, and flaming arrows.
It should surprise no one that the empire is evil. The cunning wickedness of Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus -- so important in the first movie -- has been replaced by Denzel Washington’s Macrinus, a conniving entrepreneur who owns and wagers on gladiators and angles to surpass those who belong to the senatorial elite.
Returnees include Connie Nielsen as Lucilla, Maximum’s one-time lover.
As if to differentiate this belated and somewhat boated sequel, two actors (Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger) play callow brothers who rule the empire, providing dual helpings of cruelty.
Plenty of action, much of it set in the Roman Coliseum, follows as the movie ratifies its status as a collection of CGI thrills. Digitally created super-monsters battle gladiators. These include vicious creatures that look like a combination of rabid dogs and monkeys and a rhinoceros the size of a small building.
At one point, the arena is flooded for a simulated naval battle conducted while man-eating sharks ply the shallow waters.
Though obvious, the word "overkill" leaps to mind.
I won’t bother you with details about a plot that includes reasonably predictable elements that echo developments in first movie. In case it isn't already clear, I'll summarize: After Lucius' wife is killed in the battle for Numida, he's captured and taken to Rome, where Macrinus purchases him and makes him a gladiator.
The principal performances are all up to snuff. Mescal rages and looks muscular, a man contemptuous of his origins but not entirely freed of them, even as he seeks his vengeance for his wife’s death at Roman hands.
Playing a man of conscience, Mescal’s presence is missed when he's not on screen. The movie needed more of his weight.
In what becomes the movie's stand-out performance, Washington brings Shakespearean stature to a man of wit and cunning.
Nielsen acquits herself well as Marcus’ wife, a lady with a "secret" that’s eventually revealed but which is obvious from the start.
Although many of the movie's characters are based on real historical figures, the minority of viewers who are versed in Roman history in the 200s, may blanch at inaccuracies.
Those aside, Gladiator II finds Scott putting himself through the required paces. His battle scenes serve as crowdpleasers, much in the way battling gladiators served the Roman yearning for bloody escapism.
I found the movie — which unfolds over two and a half hours -- a somewhat mechanical attempt to highlight a checklist of themes: Roman intrigue, Roman debauchery, the Roman taste for spectacle, Roman stoicism in the face of doom, and a buffed version of Roman virtue.
Put it all together and you have a movie that finds captivating moments amid a scattered, unexceptional plot. Gladiator II can't replicate the sorrows of the first movie or reach its noble heights.
As a long-time spectator in the entertainment area, I'll turn my thumb sideways and move on.
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