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!”)
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 