Gladiator II Review – Paul Mescal fends off sharks, rhinos and a scenery-chewing Denzel Washington | Gladiator II

“Aren’t you amused?” roared Russell Crowe over the bodies of half a dozen armored combatants in the original Gladiator. It is a line engraved in our collective memory. It also sums up Ridley Scott’s bellicose and punchy directorial approach to this gritty, business-like sequel. Almost a quarter of a century has passed since the first film won five Oscars in 2001 (including Best Picture and Best Actor for Crowe), but what’s remarkable is how little has changed. There is certainly a splash of fresh blood. Gladiator II passes the tunic and combat sandals on to Paul Mescal, as the enslaved but noble warrior Lucius. It sees Denzel Washington sink his teeth into a peach of a role as the slick, ambitious gladiator champion, Macrinus, ramping up the spectacle (and, it must be said, the silliness) of sharks in the Colosseum, an attacking rhinoceros. and a terrifying CGI infernal creature that appears to be part shaved baboon, part demon. Yes, we are amused, how could we not be? But apart from sharks and rhinos, fresh ideas are conspicuously lacking. This sequel is so derivative of its predecessor that it’s practically a remake.

This is evident from the start. Gladiator and Gladiator II both open with a shot of a manly hand caressing grain. In the first film, it’s the Malickian image of Crowe’s fleshy paw running through a field of golden wheat; in the other, it’s Mescal thoughtfully playing with some chicken feed. The symbolism is clear: they may be fearsome soldiers, but these are solid, simple men, rooted to the ground. The two share more than a penchant for cereal crops: both suffer from an almost identical double dip in prompting incidents early on. Both lose loved ones and are enslaved by the Roman Empire, subsequently channeling their grief and rage into gladiatorial combat. They even share a trademark move: a scissor beheading with two swords that serves as an emphatic final word in most disagreements.

The same paradoxical truths struggle at the heart of both images, which claim that the gladiators’ “games”—days of slaughter for the entertainment of the masses—represent all that is rotten at the core of ancient Rome. Cruel and capricious leaders—in this case the brother emperors Emperor Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) and Geta (Joseph Quinn), a grinning, quixotic double act—use them as a distraction from the grim realities of life for the average Roman and as a convenient way to dispose of enemies . At the same time, the violence and savagery are rather the point Gladiator film. The visceral fight sequences are phenomenal – superbly choreographed, terrifically executed and edited with switchblade precision. Sure, Scott can dress it all up in a cloak of honor and dignity, but in the end Gladiator film exploits precisely the kind of primal bloodlust that whips Colosseum audiences into a restless frenzy.

It is for this reason Gladiator II is quite binary and schematic in its approach to good versus evil. In the latter camp, the Imperial Brothers are enjoyably creepy. Caracalla has a pet monkey, an advanced case of syphilis, and the loud, giddy laughter of a mischievous child. Geta is smarter, more calculating and vengeful and wears so much horror mask makeup that he starts to look like Bette Davis in What ever happened to baby Jane?. On the side of honor and virtue, we have Lucius, essentially a cut-and-paste version of Crowe’s Maximus, with added angst. Mescal acquits himself well in the action, bringing a creeping, grimacing undertone of despair to his righteous fury. But he’s an actor who works best when he digs out the small, textured details of a character, and it’s a role that calls for a more broad-shouldered and muscular approach. Crowe’s bullish, striking line readings from the first film are sorely missed here. The only returning protagonist, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) has been stripped of much of her slight complexity and now champions, rather blandly, the egalitarian vision of Rome dreamed up by her father, Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Thank goodness, then, for Washington, who delivered by far the coolest and most memorable performance as the wily social climber Macrinus. The former slave is a slippery, ambivalent character who acts as a mentor and support to Lucius, but whose motives in this, as in all things, are entirely self-interested. If we’re entertained, it’s not because of the sharks or monkeys eating the supporting cast, but because of Washington gnawing chunks out of the scenery every time he’s in shot.