Review: Gladiator II

In an era of remakes and reboots, Gladiator II is a good old-fashioned sequel. Which is to say, it's a step down from the first film while still having enough going on to make it watchable. In fact, its big problem is that in some ways it has too much going on: someone should have said "this Rome isn't big enough for the both of us".

The story we've come to see is the tale of Lucius (Paul Mescal), who, after his African home town is conquered and his arrow-shooting wife killed by a Roman army led by Marcus Acaius (Pedro Pascal), is enslaved, becomes a gladiator, and starts stabbing his way through Rome on a mission of revenge.

Complicating matters somewhat is the fact - known to us but not him - that Marcus is sick of Rome's endless lust for conquest, and together with his wife Lucilla (Connie Nielsen from the first film) is plotting to overthrow the creepy twins currently ruling the place and restore some semblance of good governance, aka "the dream of Rome" that everyone in the first film was going on about.

And just to add another layer to proceedings, Lucius' owner is Macrinus (Denzel Washington), a former slave turned wheeler-dealer who clearly has plans of his own. He's promised Lucius that, if he plays along, he'll have all the vengeance he thirsts for and more. But if Marcus is secretly a good guy, then that means vengeance is... bad?

It's not hard to see how Lucius's character arc is meant to play out: revenge against one man becomes revenge against the system becomes trying to restore the system. Unfortunately the script is too busy with everything else going on to give Mescal (who does a very good job with the whole "leader of men" side of things) time to work through his character's multiple changes of heart.

Usually what would happen in this situation is that other subplots would be whittled down to provide that room. But when you have Denzel tearing up the place, you'd be a fool to limit his screen time - and whatever his many flaws, director Ridley Scott is no fool. Washington lights up the screen every time he's strutting around, and while he's technically a bad guy (what with not being on board with the whole "dream of Rome" deal) all that bad ain't nothing but good for the film.

And the film needs it, because while there's plenty of very impressive surface spectacle here, there's rarely much of anything to sink your teeth into. It's telling that the opening battle - which is the only one where anything is actually at stake - is also the most impressive and compelling. 

We're told that Rome is rotting from within but the sleazy decadence is barely on show, the fights are competent but rarely brutal, and the big coliseum spectaculars lack narrative heft. They don't move the story forward, they're just Lucius's day job. He doesn't even make any gladiator friends we can be worried will be killed off.

The other solution to Lucius' lack of agency - his role for much of the middle of the film is to slowly have his real status revealed to him - would be to present his arrival as a wild card, a rogue element tossed into an already complicated situation. There are traces of that, but this is so intent on looking back to the first film and presenting his arrival as a continuation rather than a new story that the longer this story goes on the less of his own man Lucius becomes. 

By the end his own motivations have been forgotten entirely, replaced by those of long dead characters whose story ended in the distant past. Even for a tale of ancient Rome, that's a bit on the nose.

- Anthony Morris