Category: Joseph Quinn

GLADIATOR II

By Marc S. Sanders

With Gladiator II, you get two of everything.  Two heroes, two emperors, two great white sharks, but only one Denzel Washington which is plenty.

The sequel to Ridley Scott’s Best Picture Oscar winner takes place sixteen years after those events when we had the impression that Rome was left in a state of nobility, devoid of treacherous gladiator games. Not so.  

Two flamboyant young men named Geta and Catacalla have taken joint rule of Rome thanks to their continued worldwide conquering delivered by their General Acacious (Pedro Pascal).  The general fought for Rome, even if he didn’t agree with the rulers’ policies.  Now he wants to rest with his wife Lucilla (Connie Nielsen, one of two returning cast members of the original film).  Though it’s hard for Acacious to remain apathetic even while the two brats demand more widespread conquests.

Elsewhere is Lucius, Lucilla’s son, a child in the first film, now an adult whose African army suffers defeat at the opening of this film.  The opening naval sea raid upon an impenetrable fort is massively impressive with arrows, fireballs, swords, sea water drownings and gory bloodletting.  Lucius is played by Paul Mescal.   

Gladiator II is full of parallel stories.  Still, you can bet these characters’ paths will all intersect in coincidental soap opera fashion during the run time of the film.

There’s nothing new to this follow up picture that you hadn’t already seen in the original Gladiator.  In fact, the first hour follows a near exact blueprint of its predecessor.  Lucius, a once revered battle commander who lost his wife, is purchased as a slave by Macrinus (Denzel Washington) to fight in gladiator games throughout the Coliseums of Rome.  Because the violence of the sport is so well assembled and enhanced compared to the last movie, it’s easy to get caught up in the fun the film offers.  The action pieces are magnificent.

Though most of the movie is ridiculous.  Historians just close up your encyclopedias.  

Most absurd, yet deliciously fun, is when the emperors arrange for the ring to be filled with salt water and man-eating sharks at the ready as naval battles are reenacted.  Now I’m not sure if this was truly accomplished in Roman times with state-of-the-art plumbing to transport and hold all of this water.  I am also skeptical of bringing bloodthirsty great white sharks straight from the Mediterranean directly into the Coliseum, but I’ll be damned if anyone tells me this centerpiece of bloodshed is not giddy to behold.

Other moments that will have you clapping are match ups between the warriors and big ass mutant, buck toothed (I mean like BUCK TOOTHED) monkeys as well your typical rhino melee.  That latter match had Miguel thinking of Attack Of The Clones.  

The best of the performances belongs to Washington.  As gleefully over the top (Miguel’s description) as Ridley Scott’s sequel is, Denzel Washington is doing scene stealing work on level with Jack Nicholson and Gene Hackman.  He’s playfully deceitful while appearing proudly respectable with his signature, toothy grin and colorfully eloquent robes that billow with his performance.  The film is not Oscar worthy, but Washington’s performance is because he masterfully works the mind-bending trickery of the character.  Macrinus worms his way through the Senators with conniving wagers placed on Lucius’ undetected fighting talents.  Actor Tim McInnerny is someone I’ve never heard of but as he plays a pitiful, gambling addicted weakling (think of Beaker from The Muppets) against Denzel Washington’s brash and conceited character, you can’t help but take pleasure in how things work out for each of the pair.

Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger are the cherub appearing emperors with extroverted cheekbones highlighted in bright rouge.  Combined,  these guys work really well as fill ins for the spoiled brattiness that Joaquin Phoenix left behind in the prior film.  Oh these kiddies are cruel and you just love to hate them.

The two heroes, Paul Mescal and Pedro Pascal, are what is left a little too bland.  They do not match the appeal that Russell Crowe delivered and it’s not simple to care for them or their outcomes.  Lacking any kind of dynamics, they occupy the athletic builds of these guys they’ve been cast to play and that’s where the script limits them.

Thankfully, Gladiator II is very entertaining.  It might not be wholly original when digging up tropes that have been used in many other sword and sandal epics, but Ridley Scott really committed to the carnage and gore we expect.  The director took much pleasure with the outrageous material and the smartest decision was to acquire Denzel Washington.  

Another actor would have slept his way through this role just for a paycheck.  Washington uses the twisted material at his disposal to own the picture all to himself.  I imagine the script documents an unforgettable monologue for his character in front of the weakling Roman senators.  This two time Oscar winning actor must have approached Ridley Scott and said let me try something.  Then the prop department made preparations for a sickeningly, grisly presentation that offers a marvelous image for the Roman Gods to behold, and one that’s hard to forget or not laughingly appreciate.  It may be a stomach-turning scene for some.  On the other hand, I applaud the brashness of the moment.

Our current Congress might be in disarray but with Gladiator II, Denzel Washington and Ridley Scott declare with confidence a resounding “HOLD MY BEER!”

GLADIATOR II (2024)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Ridley Scott
CAST: Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Connie Nielsen
MY RATING: 6/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 72% Certified Fresh

PLOT: After his home is conquered by the tyrannical emperors who now lead Rome, a rebel soldier becomes a gladiator and must look to his past to find the strength to return the glory of Rome to its people.


[SPOILER ALERT: There is a key plot point that I must divulge in my review, but it is not something I knew before watching the film, despite the fact it was supposedly spoiled in one of the trailers.  You have been warned.]

While I was being underwhelmed by Ridley Scott’s latest film, Gladiator II, I was reminded of his previous lapses in judgement.  Although he is the deservedly acclaimed director of masterpieces like Alien, Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven, and Thelma & Louise, he also helmed such misfires as 1492: Conquest of Paradise, House of Gucci, and the regrettable Robin Hood [2010].  My point is that Gladiator II is a reminder that Mr. Scott is human like anyone else and occasionally makes mistakes.

I’m not saying that Gladiator II is a terrible film, though.  It is not aggressively bad like some other films I could mention (*cough, The Counselor, cough*).  It has some amazing sights, like the rhino battle in the Colosseum, and it boasts a triumphantly over-the-top performance from Denzel Washington as Macrinus, a flamboyant trainer of gladiators with designs of his own for the city of Rome.  On those merits alone, Gladiator II is maybe worth a watch.

But…but…

While the story is interesting from a standpoint of pure plotting, and while we get the requisite nostalgia bombs of seeing Connie Nielsen back again along with periodic flashbacks to the first Gladiator [2000], I felt curiously distant from the film itself.  I have theories about this phenomenon, but nothing conclusive.

First, the lead actor, Paul Mescal, as [SPOILER ALERT] Lucius.  He looks the part, I grant you that, at least from a physical standpoint.  He’s built, he appears to do most of the physical stunts himself, and he delivers his lines with the appropriate gravitas.  But I never got behind him as the hero of the piece.  Maybe it’s because he’s a complete unknown to me?  Maybe because we barely got to know him before he was suddenly thrust into the main story arc?  (By contrast, in the first Gladiator, we got to know Maximus inside and out before he became a gladiator.)

My sympathies went entirely towards Pedro Pascal as General Acacius, the military mastermind behind Rome’s greatest victories.  He is the new husband of Lucilla (played by the returning Connie Nielsen), whose son, you’ll remember, was last seen following Maximus’s body out of the Colosseum, sixteen years before Gladiator II begins.  Acacius is dutiful almost to a fault, deferring all glory on the battlefield to the empire of Rome, even if it’s currently being run by a couple of brothers (Emperors Geta and Caracalla) who are entitled, bloodthirsty tyrants.  He is weary of the constant bloodshed and wonders if there isn’t a better way to restore Rome to glory.

And Denzel Washington…well, I’ll get to him in a minute.

So, the story, while it must have been compelling on paper, seems to be a healthy echo of the first film.  Another defeated soldier becomes a gladiator.  Another successful Roman general wants to restore Rome.  More spectacular, bloody battles inside and outside the Colosseum.  More political intrigue regarding power-hungry senators and double-dealing merchants.  Forgive me, but I’ve been there, and I’ve done that.  (And adding massive sharks to a Colosseum battle does not intrinsically make it better than anything from the first film.  However, some basic research does show that the Colosseum WAS occasionally flooded with about 5 feet of water to stage mock naval battles…so there you go.)

The undeniable highlights of the film are any scenes involving Denzel Washington.  Not since Training Day has he chewed the scenery with this much gusto (although his recent turn as Macbeth comes pretty close).  I’m guessing he still has traces of Gladiator II set pieces stuck between his teeth.  He can command a scene by his presence alone, but he adds these marvelous gestures of adjusting his robes and tossing in one of his dazzling smiles when you might least expect it.  He makes one of the greatest uses of a dramatic pause that I’ve ever heard.  (“I own…[beat, beat, beat, beat, beat]…your house.”)  In another scene, he uses an exceedingly gory prop as a punctuation mark during a speech; if he gets nominated for an Oscar for this role, that’s the scene they SHOULD use for a clip, but they probably won’t.  Shame.  The whole performance is a classic example of taking a smaller role, owning it, and turning it into a thing of beauty.  In hindsight, it’s probably a good thing that he doesn’t have much screen time, because he simply outguns his scene partners at every turn.  You can’t take your eyes off this guy.

The drawback to Washington’s masterful performance is that I found myself marking time between his scenes, instead of falling into the world of the story.  I followed along, was able to keep track of which senator was doing what and why Lucilla was so distraught and so on.  But to the degree that I was able to follow along, I just didn’t care.  I was reminded of Troy, another sword-and-sandals epic, also told on a grand scale with innumerable extras and some world-class battle scenes, but which also left me apathetic for much of its running time.

Gladiator II improves on the first film only in terms of the complexity of its visual effects and the addition of Denzel Washington.  Aside from that, I’m afraid it does very little to make me care about its heroes, its plot twists, its unexpected deaths, and the glory of Rome.

(And I had to exercise superhuman restraint, at the final shots of the film, to keep myself from yelling out loud, “Talk to me, Goose!”)