Paul Mescal wields a sword and Denzel Washington steals the show in Ridley Scott’s full-blooded sequel. Here’s our Gladiator II review:
If Gladiator was a film for a less pessimistic pre-9/11 America, its sequel is full of post-January 6th angst. There are talks of insurrection by flickering candlelight, power-mad emperors planning unjust wars overseas, and lots of bloody retribution. But while it’s possible to pick through Gladiator II for modern parallels and political undercurrents, this is still Ridley Scott at his most straightforwardly crowd-pleasing.
Like its predecessor, Gladiator II is a revenge movie in the guise of a Hollywood sword and sandal epic, though this time the motivations for that vengeance – and at times, who to root for – are less clear. At first though, Scott’s sequel almost feels like a remake of the 2000 movie: it opens with a spectacular battle sequence (this time, with Roman troops invading North Africa), before introducing a hero who, like Russell Crowe’s Maximus before him, winds up as a slave and must find freedom through gladiatorial combat.
This time, it’s Paul Mescal who picks up a short sword as Lucius, a Numidian warrior who’s defeated in battle and bundled off to Rome in chains. Using his combat experience in the arena, Lucius catches the eye of the wealthy, sly Macrinus (Denzel Washington), a nobleman who has his own stable of gladiators and plans to seize control of Rome.
What initially feels like a straight re-tread of Scott’s earlier hit – right down to loving aerial shots of the Colosseum in its pomp – gradually diverges in fascinating ways. First, the object of Lucius’s rage isn’t an obvious villain like Gladiator's Emperor Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix); he’s the war-weary Acacius (Pedro Pascal). A loving husband to Lucilla (Connie Nielsen, reprising her role from the first film), Acacius is more humble – and more importantly, sane – than the two maniacal, possibly syphilitic emperors who now govern Rome, Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger).
There’s also the question of what to make of Lucius, a character who isn’t as unambiguously heroic as Russell Crowe’s lead. Macrinus himself notes that Lucius is driven by blind fury, and in one standout scene, as a grinning Mescal recites a poem by Virgil to an increasingly ill-at-ease onlooker, we might even wonder if he’s a bit unhinged. In what was clearly a demanding (and expensive) production, Mescal puts in a brawny performance in the arena, but cuts an unusual figure elsewhere; there are times where he, adopting the same crisp baritone as Crowe, feels as much in the shadow of Maximus as his character does.
The film itself is similarly in thrall to its own legacy, much like other sequels of recent years; there are lines of dialogue, passages of music and even brief clips from the original Gladiator, though nothing quite as distracting as another 2024 film connected to Scott, Alien: Romulus, which piled its duration high with nods to its forebears (perhaps coincidentally, the famous statue of Romulus and Remus suckling a she-wolf makes an appearance in Gladiator II).
Even as Ridley Scott’s sequel, written by David Scarpa, references the first Gladiator, the veteran director seems to be determined to upstage his own work in terms of scale and ambition. In the decades since the events of the 2000 movie, the Colosseum has had a bit of a refit; the lift that gave Maximus his grand entrance into the arena is out, but in its place you’ll find some spectacularly outlandish battles that occasionally border on the zany. There are baboons, sharks, a rhinoceros, and more visual delights besides. Scott’s career is studded with duels of one sort or another, from the cool swordplay of The Duellists to heroines fighting off xenomorphs in his Alien movies. As they were in his more recent The Last Duel (2021), Scott’s fights are gritty, bloody and at times downright nasty.
Dramatically, Gladiator II doesn’t quite recapture the soul of the original; for this writer, its characters simply don’t pull at the heartstrings to the same degree. It’s a darker, more twisted film than Gladiator, its moments of triumph laced with uncertainty, anger and madness. But what it does have is intrigue and tension by the square yard, as allegiances shift and fortunes change at the whims of its brattish dictators.
In terms of pure entertainment, Gladiator II is Ridley Scott’s most satisfying movie since The Martian. Its action is as confidently handled and as bloodthirsty as its predecessor, all accompanied by Harry Gregson-Williams’ grandiose, faintly Bernard Hermann-esque score. Gladiator II is unabashed in its desire to enthral by any means necessary, whether it’s the dirt and bloodshed of a sword fight or the sight of a diminutive monkey in an immaculately-tailored dress.
Among all the dazzling spectacle in Scott’s sequel, though, nothing can quite match Denzel Washington in terms of wattage. The actor draws on that wellspring of emotion he always seems to carry with him to create a character who’s as enigmatic as he is charismatic. Sharp eyes twinkling, draped in his finery, he walks away with the entire movie thrown over his shoulder, cackling with glee. Are we not entertained?
Gladiator II is in UK cinemas from the 15th November.
