4 stars out of 5
All I remembered about the first Gladiator, from 2000, is that I liked it a lot more than I thought I would, and also that it was one of the movies which made me realize that even though Russell Crowe seemed like a jerk in real life, he was a really good actor. Now, with a quick plot refresher from Wikipedia (note to self: send them three dollars), I was ready for part II.
We meet Anno (Paul Mescal, who was Connell in that sexy series Normal People), who is really Lucius, prodigal son of Russell Crowe and Connie Nielsen, sent away from Rome as a child for his own safety. Grown Anno’s town gets run over by Roman general Pedro “The Mandalorian” Pascal, who is Connie Nielsen’s boyfriend. Mescal, now a slave, wants revenge on Pascal, not realizing the Mandalorian has become disillusioned with Rome’s whole military-industrial complex and its inept twin emperors, Don Jr. and Eric. Enter Denzel Washington, who trains slaves to become gladiators, but really has bigger fish to fry, or else they wouldn’t have cast Denzel in the “Mickey” role. And Anno — who, don’t forget, is really Lucius the prodigal son — is a very promising young gladiator.
Director Ridley Scott once again has a top-flight cast to work with, including Nielsen and Roman senator Derek Jacobi who both return from the first film. For the third time, Scott works with screenwriter David Scarpa, most recently on last year’s Napoleon, which starred Joaquin Phoenix, who was the bad guy in the first Gladiator. Scott and Scarpa know their way around large-scale battles, and Scarpa must have a thing for monkeys, because there is quite a lot of monkey content in this movie, including one bit that made me howl with laughter.
For the bulk of the film, I found it watchable, comprehensible, and generally enjoyable. But towards the end, the story takes on more heft — I’ve mentioned that Anno is a prodigal son? And we known what prodigal sons do — raising the stakes of politics, family, loyalty, backstabbing, and the desire for authoritarian power versus the loftier ideals of democracy (hmm where have I heard that before?). And for me, this bumped up the overall quality of the film — not quite to Gladiator’s Best Picture/Best Actor status, but as a worthy sequel nonetheless.
Jack Silbert, curator