‘Gladiator II’ Review: Rome if You Want To

In the opening credits of Gladiator II, a rotoscoped animated retelling of the finale of 2000’s Oscar-winning Gladiator with Russell Crowe’s Maximus killing Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus in the Colosseum and then dying a hero and martyr himself, director Ridley Scott makes no bones that we’re settling in for a continued chapter in the Maximus saga, with a foundation he built that made the first so successful and turning in his best film in years.

Our new tale takes place 16 years after the death of Maximus. Combat in the Colosseum has become even more deadly, violent, and spectacular as bloodthirsty crowds urge the mad and deranged twin emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn, A Quiet Place: Day One) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger, The White Lotus) to new heights of cruelty. The Roman Empire continues its relentless march across the world, led by a weary General Acacius (Pedro Pascal, The Last of Us), expanding its borders into Africa, with eyes on Persia and India, pillaging every culture in its path and forcing the captured be either slaves or gladiators to fight for their lives in the ring for the enjoyment of the noble and poor alike. But the fickle everyday Romans’ alliances are easily swayed; unwashed masses that can champion a general one day and a slave the next.

Lucius (Academy Award nominee Paul Mescal, Aftersun), known as Hano in the beginning, lives a peaceful farm life in the North African region of Numidia with his wife Arishat (Yuval Gonen) but that is shattered as Acacius’ battle boats draw near, pushing their iron bows directly into the stone walls of the fortressed village. Lovers turn into warriors as Lucius and Arishat both suit up to fight this forced colonization. Holding strong at first, Hano’s small army is quickly overrun as the slings and arrows volley back and forth, as catapults of flaming pots destroy boats and a rather enormous spear dispatches a man in particularly savage fashion. A frustrated Acacius eyes the highly successful killing machine that is Arishat and orders her kill and she falls from her vantage point into the sea. Hano, only having seconds to witness her demise, suffers a blow to the head and enters his own watery doom. A brief, dreamy sequence that looks somewhere between silver and black of Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and a Calvin Klein ad from the 90s (complimentary) finds Lucius in between life and death as Arishat is taken across the dark river (or the River Styx, if you’re so inclined). But death is not ready for him, he has vengeance to fulfill and his conscience is thrust back to the real world.

But this vengeance is forced to burrow as Lucius is taken prisoner, sold to Denzel Washington’s Macrinus, a Machiavellian mastermind, a former slave himself and now high level player in Rome; a sinister citizen with his fingers in all aspects of Roman life, secretly pulling strings and using senators, slaves, and gladiators as his play things. “This one’s interesting, I’ll buy him,” he says after seeing Lucius fight baboons, rhinos, and men alike. It’s a fantastically malevolent performance from Washington, who’s no stranger to playing baddies, but never quite at the level of ‘that messy bitch who lives for the drama’ as he is here. Yet at almost every turn he doesn’t go fully camp with Macrinus; he has hilarious and conniving moments (his “I own this house” scene with the worrisome queen Senator Thrax is incredible) but it’s a grounded Denzel Washington creation from start to finish. He’s glorious to watch.

Mescal, best known for his sad boy roles in Normal People, Aftersun and All of Us Strangers, gets to continue to flex those emotional muscles here as well as his newfound physical ones in ways and on a scale we’ve never seen from him on screen before. Beefy and barrel-chested, he fits the part. His Gaelic football background is on full display here, maximizing his stunt work as he gets smashed onto a table, WWE style. He may be biting monkey arms and beheading foes but we also get the sensitive Mescal, who cries as much as he gives rousing speeches, recites Virgil’s “The gates of hell are open night and day; smooth the descent, and easy is the way,” and makes himself continuously vulnerable to the audience, if not so much his enemies, all while never losing the indie grit that he’s built a career on.

Quinn and Hechinger absolutely revel in playing these disgusting brothers; maniacal children playing dress up, as white-faced as Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and equally as delusional. Connie Nielsen’s Lucilla is the binding thread from the first film (Derek Jacobi also returns as Senator Gracchus) but is often the weak link despite her emotional arc. Pascal turns in one of his more surprisingly sympathetic performances, a lifelong soldier finding himself at odds with his emperors and himself as he returns home from war to Lucilla, his wife, creating a conflict of personal heft.

John Mathieson returns as cinematographer and while he doesn’t venture too far outside the color wheel of blues, yellows and browns that marked the first film (and many that followed), his significant use of natural light does find devil in the details with crisper images and deeper shadows; whether it’s gloriously capturing Mescal’s physical Roman-esque attributes, the bloody savagery of hand to hand combat (and it is a truly blood-soaked, bone-crunching feast), giant rhinos spearing men and tossing them like toys or sharks turning overboard soldiers into chum.

Production designer Arthur Max chalks up his 16th collaboration with Scott (including the first Gladiator), providing some of the most lived-in sets of his career. From the cities to the Colosseum itself, the tactile nature and scope of the design gives real-world stakes in a way that weightless CGI can rarely accomplish. Not that CGI isn’t a crucial part here, it definitely is, and it (mostly) augments rather than detracts. The now classic line “You think you’re so great because you have boats!” from Napoleon finds itself in the subtext here as the thrilling sequence of the Colosseum flooded for a naval reenactment of the Battle of Salome gives us crackling, splintering wood, camera POV of crashes in one of the film’s most thoroughly rousing moments.

Costume designer Janty Yates (Napoleon) has a field day here, from the ornate gold and general gaudiness of the twins to her greatest achievement, the capes and gowns worn by Washington, who sashays in them like he’s on the runway, fingers full of rings, ears adorned with giant hoops in a way that says ‘adore me’ and ‘fear me’ in equal measure. Since we’re not caring too much about historical accuracy, would it have killed her to let Mescal’s skirt hemline be a little shorter? Asking for everyone. Harry Gregson-Williams takes over for Hans Zimmer, utilizing some similar notes in his compositions but finds his own path with period instruments like the carnyx, ancient woodwinds and intense, operatic violins that punctuate but surprisingly don’t overwhelm.

This is writer David Scarpa’s third collaboration with Scott, having previously written All the Money in the World and last year’s Napoleon (which had a non-credited assist from Paul Thomas Anderson) but this is his best work yet, largely by not bogging down the action and non-action sequences with exhaustive historical exposition (and we know Scott’s gleefully ‘don’t give a fuck about historical accuracy’ approach to that). Action set pieces are huge and hearty and emotional sections are giving time to breathe. From the poetry that flows from Mescal’s tongue with a Shakespearean natural ease to Washington getting some of the chewiest dialogue since American Gangster, Scarpa crafts a well-constructed script of building acts through tension and suspense even if we as the audience know more than our protagonist does at most turns, paying both honor and homage to the first film.

At almost 87, Ridley Scott has been banging out films and television shows either as a director or producer (and often both) since he began in the 1960s with few breaks and such rapid succession, sometimes two in a year (and no less than six in various stages of production right now), that it’s hard not to see some diminishing results in those efforts when compared to his heyday of Alien, Blade Runner and Thelma & Louise, with all due respect to fans of his more recent work like The Last Duel and more. Scott’s done legacy sequels in his career before, 2012’s Prometheus is one of his best. But something has been captured here, what felt like lightning in a bottle 24 years ago is back. There’s a fire, a return to greatness. 

Gladiator II is the grandest spectacle of the year, a stirring epic and Paul Mescal is a worthy successor to the throne.

Grade: A-

Paramount Pictures will release Gladiator II internationally on November 15 and in the U.S. on November 22.