‘Where we are, death is not, and where death is, we are not’ intones the soon-to-be-a-conquered-gladiator Lucius (Paul Mescal) early in Gladiator 2, as he rallies the troops of his home city in the face of an imminent Roman attack. It’s a nice sentiment, but one that is proved roundly false by Ridley Scott’s return to Rome 24 years after his much-loved and Oscar-conquering original. Gladiator 2 is awash with deaths of all kinds (wars, assassinations, baboon attacks) wherever Lucius goes in this crueller, bloodier, and yet ultimately less interesting sequel that, a barnstorming performance from Denzel Washington aside, rather pales in comparison to its predecessor.
A roughly real-time sequel (picking up 20 years after the original left off), Gladiator 2 first finds Lucius, the son of Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) and Maximus, in Numidia, where he was sent by his mother in order to avoid assassins from rival claimants to the imperial throne following the death of Commodus. Going by the name of Hanno, he loves his adopted home, and the wife he’s found within it, but this is all violently seized from him when the Roman army conquers the region, killing his wife and enslaving him in the process, soon selling him to the scheming arms and gladiators trader Macrinus (Washington).
This battle forms the opening set-piece, and it’s really great, mirroring the fight in Germania from the original but this time letting us see Roman battle through the eyes of the ‘barbarians’ being conquered by their relentless and ruthlessly efficient war machine. As was the case with Napoleon last year, Gladiator 2 really sings on the battlefield and in the Colosseum, with sieges, duels to the death, and the much-trailed flooded-Colosseum naval battle all absolute show-stoppers. Scott is still the undisputed champ of this sort of action, and all of these set-pieces are just as thrilling and involving as you’d hope.
On the story side of things, though, it’s less rosy. Lucius’s quest for revenge against the commander who led the Roman invasion of his home, General Acacius (Pedro Pascal), never possesses the weight of Maximum’s journey of vengeance, partly a fault of an emotionally thinner script from David Scarpa (who also wrote Napoleon) and partly down to an often underwhelming cast. Mescal here lacks Russell Crowe’s pure charm and star power, making for a more generically shouty performance, while Pascal is just given very little to do. As insane twin emperors Geta and Caracalla, Fred Hechinger and Joseph Quinn have some initial fun but, for me, rather wore out their welcome by the end.
Of course, the exception to this is Washington, whose Macrinus is, by an infinite margin, the film’s best character. Somewhat taking over the Oliver Reed Proximo role but also going somewhere much more sinister and power-hungry, he’s an absolute delight whenever he’s on screen. Through him and his oddly modern mannerisms, the idea of this Rome being our world’s current America is brought to compelling life, adding much-needed depth to a story that doesn’t have much of it elsewhere.
It is easy to criticise Gladiator 2 for, simply, not stacking up to its great ancestor (see also: its generic score which is utterly outclassed by the original’s), but this is still a mostly very fun romp through a grand slice of gore-slathered history. Scott keeps things moving at a mighty fine clip, the 150-ish minute runtime never feeling long or padded out (to the point that the ending even feels a little bit rushed), and it is always just great to get a historical epic with this sort of budget and scale. It might not echo in eternity, but it will certainly entertain.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 