Reviews For The Easily Distracted: Gladiator II

Title:  Gladiator II

Describe This Movie Using One Airplane! Quote:

Ha ha, bet you weren't expecting that.

Brief Plot Synopsis: Swords. Sandals. ...Sharks?

Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 2.5 Chris De Burghs out of 5.

Tagline: N/A

Better Tagline: "What we do in life, echoes in redundancy."

Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: The free city of Numidia is about to fall into the clutches of the Roman Empire, despite the best efforts of the curiously blue-eyed "Hanno" (Paul Mescal), who showed up some 16 years ago following the deaths of Commodus and the gladiator Maximus Decimus Meridius in Rome. In case you haven't already figured it out, Hanno is actually Lucius Verus, son of Maximus and Lucilla (Connie Nielsen). And just like dear old dad, he's forced into gladiator-ing under the tutelage of Macrinus (Denzel Washington), who promises the chance to kill General Acacius (Pedro Pascal), the man responsible for the death of Hanno's wife.

"Critical" Analysis: Ridley Scott's Gladiator was a divisive effort,. Despite winning Best Picture and Best Actor for Russell Crowe, it was criticized both for its occasionally incoherent battle scenes and Scott's playing what we'll charitably (chariotably?) call "fast and loose" with Roman history.

Scott returns for Gladiator II (stylized as "GLADIIATOR" by those magnificent bastards at Paramount), and has clearly listened to some editorial comments and ignored others. The battles in his new swords + sandals epic are much better staged, while any fidelity to accepted historical bibliography has been chucked out the window like so many Vladimir Putin critics.

Just in case you weren't clear on the sequel issue, there's a nifty bleed through from the familiar "Scott Free" credits to a pre-title animated sequence summing up the events of the first film. Crowe's character looms large over everything, from his legendary fighter status to his actual gear somehow kept undiscovered in the bowels of the Colosseum for Hanno/Lucius to find.

And that's not the only familiarity on display. The events of Gladiator II mirror the original to the point of absurdity: a captured yet unidentified Roman with a past rises through the gladiatorial ranks courtesy of a benevolent (?) benefactor and wins the general public over thanks to his prodigious skills, eventually gaining the chance to challenge the very powers that be themselves. All the while, he pines for an afterlife with his unjustly murdered significant other.

It almost works. The battles are refreshingly brutal and the gladiator scenes are gleefully ridiculous. Hanno/Lucius establishes his cred by besting CGI baboons (there's a decent amount of humor grounding the goofy palace intrigue), before honest-to-Zeus engaging in a flooded Colosseum naval battle complete with bloodthirsty sharks.

All of this is at the behest of twin Emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Carcalla (Fred Hechinger), rulers whose excesses make Commodus look like Calvin Coolidge by comparison. The political machinations here are barely acknowledged, despite the return of Derek Jacobi as Senator Gracchus, and mostly serve as a backstop to Macrinus's scheming.

If there's anything to celebrate here, it's Washington's performance. Mescal is stoic, Pascal is tragic, and Nielsen is pointless, but Denzel is having a fucking blast. Nobody told him this was another redemptive revenge story, or if they did, he simply doesn't care. It's funny that one of the only historically accurate bits comes from his character's name, but that just makes it better.

Sometimes you just want to watch beefy dudes whale on each other for 120 minutes, and in that aspect, Gladiator II delivers. It probably won't win any awards (Denzel may be a sneaky Supporting Actor possibility), which would be all well and good if it was intentionally dumb instead of the other kind.

Gladiator II is in theaters today.