Bear with me here; I don’t mean what I’m about to say entirely as a pejorative. Gladiator II is a deeply silly movie. After an extremely well-staged sea-to-land battle that opens the movie, Gladiator II becomes a near-carbon copy of Russell Crowe’s journey as Maximus in the original film. Slipping into Crowe’s sandals and carrying his sword (no light lift, that) is Paul Mescal as Hanno, a soldier in Numidia whose homeland is conquered by the Roman army led by General Marcus Acacius (an underused Pedro Pascal). Hanno is then taken prisoner and brought back to Rome, where he is sold into slavery and becomes a gladiator. The man who purchases him is Macrinus (Denzel Washington, who chews up the scenery with real gusto), a former slave who has risen from the lowest of the low to a man of wealth and power and, most importantly, the ambition for more. Macrinus recognizes the rage in Hanno and has him trained to enter the Colloseum to do battle.
Here’s where the film starts to get goofy. The first battle occurs between a group of fresh gladiators and mad-as-hell monkeys that look like a cross between baboons and Mexican hairless dogs. The CGI is surprisingly underwhelming for a film with a budget north of $250 million. As nutty as the monkey fight is, the next battle in the arena involves a Roman soldier on the back of a rhinoceros attempting to run down and gore a group of gladiators. It’s a pretty wild sequence (and not necessarily historically inaccurate), and the FX rhino is far better than the monkey-dog creatures. The third battle in the Colosseum strains credulity to the breaking point. We are supposed to believe that the Romans flooded the arena (this is not the crazy part) and built two small-scale ships inside the arena (again, not the crazy part) to pit criminals against gladiators in a faux sea battle to the death (again I say, not the crazy part). The crazy part? Massive sharks (great whites?) surround the water the ships are floating on, and woe be to any shipmate who falls into the water during the scrap. Now, not only do you have to believe that the Romans would have the ability to catch such large sea animals and transport them to dry land while keeping them alive, but also to flow in enough salt water for them to survive in and behave as if they were man-eating monsters of the deep when the water in the Colosseum isn’t all that damn deep—Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
At the same time, It’s hard to hate what the 87-year-old legendary director Ridley Scott has done with the sequel to his most successful film: he’s gone completely gonzo in his octagenarian era. Had there been another battle between animals and gladiators, I would not have been surprised if the enslaved would have gone up against a Yeti or two, but I suppose shooting a sequence with imported snow in sunny Italy was a bridge too far, even for Ridley Scott.
I confess that I also felt a measure of pity for poor Paul Mescal, a wonderful actor (see All of Us Strangers and his Oscar-nominated lead performance in Aftersun for evidence) stuck with an, at best, two-dimensional part that puts him in the position of competing with Russell Crowe’s definitive role (well, I would go with The Insider, but I know that’s a minority opinion) and in the presence of the greatest actor of his generation, Denzel Washington. Mescal does what he can with the part, and the normally slender actor clearly beefed up for the role, but even with the added muscle, Mescal lacks the physical gravitas of Crowe and even the 69-year-old Washington.
Gladiator II is Washington’s second film with Ridley Scott, the first being American Gangster (with Crowe as his co-star). Washington also made five movies with Ridley’s late brother Tony, so the “why did Denzel take a supporting role?” question can probably be answered by friendship and a big-ass check with a lot of zeroes on it. To say that Washington’s Macrinus steals the whole film is a statement so obvious that I’m wondering if I should have bothered saying it at all. But boy, does he ever.
Gladiator II may be a madcap film, but it takes itself extremely seriously. Washington aside, just about every other actor in the movie speaks their lines sans humor, as if the words written for them came from the quill of one of the Bard’s tragedies. Trust me, they do not. But Washington’s Macrinus, a mover and shaker and puller of the strings of Rome’s brotherly emperors (played by Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger in off-puttingly one-note stereotypical “poof” performances), makes every line sing and seems to be the only person having a good time in the movie. As the film moves forward, our expectations of a Pascal vs. Mescal face-off (side note: Pascal vs. Mescal would make an excellent boxing poster) are upended as we learn that Pescal’s general is not the enemy, nor are the two wicked emperors (well, they are pretty awful, but hardly imposing). The real villain is Washington’s Macrinus.
Paradoxically, the film’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness are one and the same: Washington is so wickedly charming that as his evil plot unveils itself, you still find yourself rooting for him. Even as he engineers the death sentence of Lucilla (the ever-luminous Connie Nielsen who provides the one actorly link between Gladiator and Gladiator II), you still can’t hate him. Washington may be surrounded by other fine actors in the film, but he’s playing on a different level, and it’s hard for the viewer not to want to follow his journey as opposed to Mescal’s.
When the first trailer for Gladiator II was released, there were complaints that Denzel Washington sounded too much like, well, Denzel Washington. If that seems concerning, then I’ve got news for you: no one in Gladiator II makes any pretensions of speaking with a “Roman” accent.
If you’ve followed the career of Ridley Scott, this should be no surprise. Joaquin Phoenix made no effort to sound like a Frenchman (or a Corsican) in Scott’s take on Napoleon from last year. Scott’s first film, The Duellists, was released in 1977 and starred Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel as French antagonists—and no, Keith and Harvey didn’t do accents either. Looking over Scott’s esteemed resume, it’s clear that period accents have never mattered a whit to him. Scott is the director who cast Gerard Depardieu as Christopher Columbus, Christian Bale as Moses, and Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as Frenchmen. The one time Scott prioritized an accurate geographical accent was in House of Gucci, and we certainly could have done without it unless you’re a fan of unintentional laughter on film.
That’s not to say that Ridley Scott, one of the finest filmmakers of his era, doesn’t make films with depth. Anyone who has seen Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, Blackhawk Down, American Gangster, the terribly underrated The Counselor, and The Last Duel should be able to attest to Scott’s thoughtfulness throughout his nearly 50 years in cinema. That being said, Scott has always leaned towards spectacle. Despite the knocks I’ve taken at the film in this review, there can be no doubt that Gladiator II delivers when it comes to filling up the widescreen with extraordinary images. The film’s running time is two hours and 28 minutes, and not a single ridiculous second is dull. And, you know, it has Denzel Washington in it. On December 28 of this year, Washington will turn 70. He has recently stated that he does not intend to act in films much longer. While I hope his statement was just an offhand comment, if Washington is in a movie, it’s worth seeing. Gladiator II is no exception.
