Directed by Ridley Scott | Written by David Scarpa and Peter Craig | 148 min | ▲▲▲△△
I was never a part of Gladiator‘s rabid cult. I recognized it as an unexpectedly popular throwback entertainment, swords and sandals at a time when neither were cool, but to anoint it with five Oscars in 2000, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Russell Crowe? That felt like a stretch.
Scott was nominated for Best Director — I probably would’ve appreciated that most of all, but he didn’t get it. He deserved it for his body of work — Alien, Blade Runner, and Thelma & Louise, these are the undeniable classics. Gladiator doesn’t hold a candle to those films. If we’re making a list of the Best of Scott, I would also argue that The Kingdom of Heaven: Director’s Cut is better, and so is The Martian.
In recent years it’s been a case of diminishing returns for the brilliant visualist in his 80s — he has an astonishing work ethic, prolific while not troubling the quality of his earlier work. The Last Duel was an interesting concept that didn’t really fly, while Napoleon, House Of Gucci, and All The Money In The World won’t be remembered fondly.
It had been years since I’d watched Gladiator, so dialled it up on Netflix the other evening. It still looks glorious, the scale of it, the cinematography, editing, and sound design (which it did win an Oscar for, deservedly). As a masculine action epic it delivers. It borrows its best ideas from a few of Scott’s other movies and a few Clint Eastwood westerns, too. It has weaknesses — Joaquin Phoenix has thankfully managed to locate a lot more nuance in his acting since playing the sweaty baby caesar, Commodus, with the fluffy British accent.
The emperors this time out are mad brothers, Geta and Caracalla (Joseph Quinn of Stranger Things, and Fred Hechinger), though they don’t make much of an impression until the third act. Gladiator II starts with one of the things Scott is especially good at, a huge battle scene shot in Morocco, apparently using sets from Kingdom of Heaven almost 20 years ago he sold to the locals because he didn’t want to spend the money to destroy them. They’ve now rented them back to him. Paul Mescal is Hanno, a soldier on the parapet of a fortress destroyed by the Roman fleet led by General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal). Hanno’s wife gets fridged in the battle, giving him all the motivation to become a gladiator and go to Rome to have his revenge.
Awkwardly, Acacius is married to Lucilla (Connie Neilsen), who is Hanno’s mother. I’m not even going to try to pretend Hanno is anyone other than the boy, Lucius, from the first movie then played by Spencer Treat Clark. The marketing for this movie pretty much reveals it and anyone paying attention is going to figure it out in the first 10 minutes.
You may ask why Lucius was sent away from Rome given Maximus’ sacrifice in the first film, and that would be a good question. I would suggest this isn’t a movie where you should query the fine points of the plot.
I would also suggest that the best reason for seeing this is Denzel Washington, who gets my favourite line delivery in the movie: “That’s politicssssah!!” He is Macrinus, replacing Proximo, the part Oliver Reed played in the first film — he traffics in men of violence for the arena and he’s the one who takes Lucius to Rome. As Lucius has success in the Colosseum, behind the scenes there’s a plot hatched to overthrow the mad emperors. At the heart of it is Acacius, who is tired of war, and a very welcome Tim McInnerny as Thraex, a Roman Senator in a lot of debt to Macrinus. Good to see Derek Jacobi, returning from the first film, and smaller roles for Matt Lucas, Rory McCann, and Peter Mensah. (Mensah was terrific in Spartacus, one of the better gladiator shows that cropped up after Gladiator.)
The palace intrigue is the most fun you’re likely to have here, because the rest of it is just more of the same from the first, with extra lopping off of limbs, of heads, and the like — more violence and more gore. We also get elements that feel like fantasy — where did the Romans find rhinos to ride and sharks to put in their flooded arena? Otherwise, I’d almost call this movie a loose remake, and that’s not a compliment.
Mescal has the physicality for the part — at times he sounds like he’s doing a Russell Crowe impersonation — but his inner life is a lot more unclear than his predecessor. The script needs his character to make some big changes quickly, and his motivations are at best, muddy. By the end of this over-long epic, while its political themes of civic fairness and a republic for all are laudable, the picture relishes the chaos of battle and bloodletting a whole lot more than considering the alternatives. But then, what fun would that be, right?
