Though I don’t expect much hard history when I take in a historical drama, I always appreciate it more if I leave it knowing more about the past than I did going in. Ridley Scott’s latest epic, a long-simmering sequel to one of his most successful films, not only failed to give me anything historically significant to chew on, but mostly contradicted the small amount of knowledge I thought I possessed about the Roman Empire. I could attribute this failure to either a patent disregard for actual facts or weak storytelling that didn’t make the historical aspects credible on their own merits. It’s probably the latter, since the plot, as simple-minded as it is, tracks its own internal logic as a movie spectacle, and if there is any history that must be reckoned with its the one plotted in the first Gladiator, where Russell Crowe’s Maximus almost single-handedly revived democratic longings as he helped bring about the destruction of a tyrant. Gladiator II attempts to do pretty much the same thing, which makes me wonder if either of these heroes really knows what he’s fighting for. Even those of us who never read Gibbon understand what the title of his famous opus refers to. 

Our hero this time is Lucius (Paul Mescal), a farmer in a North African province that is invaded by the Romans. Lucius and his wife join in the fight to protect their way of life from the Roman general Acacius (Pedro Pascal), but cannot withstand the huge onslaught. Lucius’s wife is killed in battle and Lucius taken prisoner and enslaved. In Rome, he is selected to fight in the Colosseum after being vetted by the gladiator broker Macrinus (Denzel Washington), who encourages Lucius’s desire for retribution in order to make him a more exciting combatant in enclosed conflicts, and he’s right. Lucius vanquishes both man and beast in the arena, satisfying the blood lust of the psychopathic brother emperors, Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracella (Fred Hechinger), but, more importantly, stimulating the hoi polloi, who, as they did with Maximus, take his side and spur him to rebellious action. However, the real dramatic focus is on Macrinus, a former slave himself who, in Washington’s hilariously on-point enunciation, declares himself a “friend of politics,” meaning someone skilled in the arts of transactional manipulation. Just as he gets the most out of Lucius’s rage in the arena, he puts that rage to supplemental use by steering it toward those who stand in his way to greater personal power. 

It’s already been said that Washington is the main, if not the only, reason to see Gladiator II, but it’s because he imbues Macrinus with more wit and fire than any one else in the movie does with their characters. Just as the history of the Roman Empire gets lost in the copious, CG-enhanced action set pieces and rote narrative development, the actors are subsumed by their generically conceived characters. Mescal rarely is given a chance to calm down. Connie Nielsen, reprising her role as the daughter of Marcus Aurelius (who is granted the kind of hero-in-hindsight stature of a dead Kennedy) and lover of Maximus, mostly frets and pouts. The other gladiators are nothing more than an attitude branded on raw meat. At least in the first movie a few were given personalities. 

Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), 109 Cinemas Premium Shinjuku (0570-060-109), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Shibuya (050-6868-5002), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Gladiator II home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2024 Paramount Pictures