Paul Mescal completes his transition from sensitive metrosexual heartthrob to box office beefcake in Ridley Scott’s sequel to his award-winning sword and sandal epic Gladiator, from 2000.
The new film is another polished, action-packed, historical blockbuster from the directorial powerhouse, who turns 87 this month and shows no sign of slowing. It picks up the family story and the saga of a decaying empire 16 years after Marcus Aurelius’s democratic “dream of Rome” has gone sour.
The 24 years that have passed since the first film, meanwhile, are useful: we remember the seven Oscars, the ground-breaking CGI, Russell Crowe bawling “are you not ENTERTAINED!” at a baying Coliseum crowd. But memories are dim and distant enough that we may not notice that the sequel is more or less a rehash of the original.
Back then Crowe’s Maximus was a Roman general reduced to slavery and seeking revenge on Aurelius’s wicked successor Commodus for the deaths of family and friends. Here Mescal is – smallish spoiler alert, but it’s already out there – Lucius, the illegitimate son of Maximus and Commodus’s sister-wife Lucilla (Connie Nielsen). Sent away aged 12, he has no idea of his martial or imperial roots and is a farmer in his adopted Numidia.
Alas, his wife is killed and he is captured while defending their citadel against Lucilla’s second husband Acacias (Pedro Pascal, underused), who is somewhat reluctantly conducting wars of conquest on behalf of the new, psychotic twin emperors Geta and Caracalla. Fortunately, Lucius has somehow inherited his father’s skill as both a tactician and close-quarters fighter.
Good job, as he’s soon in the arena facing not just swordsmen and archers but ravening baboons, a thundering rhinoceros, and sharks darting around a flooded amphitheatre – often with just his steely eyes, brawny arms, and even white teeth to defend himself. A nice early joke has him biting the massive monkey snapping at him.
If Mescal is the pumping heart of the movie, its characterful head is Denzel Washington as Macrinus, a wolfishly grinning, bejewelled gladiator trainer with his own agenda. Washington lights up every scene he’s in and effectively drives the plot, and the plotting. (Macrinus has a handy senatorial sidekick who should be called Expositus, but isn’t.)
There are nice nods to the first film in an enhanced role for Neilson, and the reappearance of original cast members Derek Jacobi and Djimon Hounsou. And a couple of hat-tips to the cinematic genre that Scott single-handedly revived: there’s a direct homage to Spartacus’s most famous scene, while the pallid, wet-eyed actors playing Geta and Caracalla are surely channeling Malcolm McDowell in Caligula.
The script, by David Scarpa, is highly efficient in the way it martials and concludes the original story, even if the dialogue feels somewhat emulative. The film has been criticised for historical inaccuracies, which surely misses the point. This is a fantasy of underdog retaliation against totalitarianism, where American and Irish accents mix, with a hero who bleeds but can take a metal-edged shield in the face without blinking.
Gladiator II is stirring, gung-ho stuff, and it all looks ravishing, from the aerial views of Rome to the crunching action scenes. Mescal exudes charisma and testosterone, especially when rocking a gladiator’s mini-skirted tunic. Ridley Scott, we salute you.
Gladiator II is in cinemas from Friday
Cert 15, 148 minutes
