Paul Mescal is buffed, bearded and bronzed and prepared to do battle in the Colosseum in Ridley Scott's gloriously enjoyable Gladiator sequel
A brooding and bloody lead performance from Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington peacocking about like a superfly Machiavelli, bone-crushing action, and twin Caligulan emperors - you can’t say Ridley Scott hasn’t given us exactly what we want in his much-hyped return to Rome.
Nearly a quarter of a century after the huge success of Gladiator, we are back in the third century and a Roman Empire rotting from the inside out. Citizens are starving on the streets and the Senate is plotting to overthrow the twin mad emperors.
Picking up 15 years after the heroic death of Maximus and with only two of the original actors on board, blood spurts, bones are crushed, chunks are taken out of a troupe of thoroughly pissed off baboons in the Colosseum and a seaborne invasion provides an adrenalin-pumping opening sequence.
David Scarpa’s declamatory script is wooden and Denzel Washington is the only stand-out performance but Scott is sure to give us all the blood and circuses we can handle in two-and-half hours of old school filmmaking on a bloody and epic scale.
Watch our interview with Paul Mescal
The action centres on Maximus’s son, Lucius, who is, of course, played by the beaut from Maynooth, Paul Mescal. Exiled and abandoned for this own safety by his mother (Connie Neilsen) in the first movie, he is now a man of the soil living in peace with his wife in Namibia.
However, the Roman army soon descends. With his wife killed during battle, Lucius is enslaved, sold into Gladiator boot camp and mentored by political fixer Macrinus (a fabulous Denzel Washington), who is now the richest man in Rome and engaged in some empire building of his own.
The question for many is can Mescal carry a movie of this scale? We know him as the emotionally fragile young men he played in Normal People and Aftersun but is he ready to be a leader of men in the crucible of cruelty that is Rome’s Colosseum?
Looking Romanesque and aquiline and speaking in a RADA accent required of all sword and sandal epics, he brings a degree of vulnerability to his performance to match Russell’s Crowe’s blunt force magnetism in the first movie. And do we detect something of Kirk Douglas reluctant hero in Spartacus in Mescal’s understated performance as he battles with rage and hatred as well as foes bristling with weapons in the arena? I mean, he weeps and quotes Virgil.
The Maynooth man is stoic and watchful, with a quiet charisma, nobility and pecs appeal to spare in this story of political chicanery, war, and revenge. He’s got the action chops and if anything, there is far less for him to do in the dramatic acting department than the roles that made him famous. Which is just as it should be.
Meanwhile, General Acacius (Pedro Pascal), who has claimed this latest territory for the glory of Rome, is plotting to overthrow the deeply creepy emperors. The first Gladiator gave us Joaquin Phoenix as a lip-smackingly evil emperor. This time out, we get twin mad potentates, sickly-looking redheads Caracalla and Geta (Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger) as a kind of antiquarian Beavis and Butthead. Both have a taste for the cruel and unusual.
As with the original, Gladiator II comes into its own with the battle scenes. The opening sequence of the invading Roman navy assailing coastal battlements is sheer adrenalin and bravado editing. Later, Mescal literally bites chunks out of a vicious baboon and outwits a giant rhino in the dustbowl of the Colosseum. It’s gloriously gory stuff.
Scott clearly believes that when in Rome, one must go all out and the centrepiece of his movie is a re-enactment of a naval battle held in a flooded colosseum patrolled by sharks.
Besides those baboons and rhinos, the real big beast here is Washington as Macrinus, a duplicitous plutocrat with a shark-like grin who manipulates patricians and plebians alike and soon has the emperors at each other’s throats. In his gold embroidered raiment and swagger, he’s like a superfly Machiavelli.
After wobbles with his flawed Napoleon biopic and the misfiring Last Duel, Scott is back on firmer territory here. If men are said to think of the Roman Empire at least once a day, some of them will no doubt quibble about the anachronisms but Scott’s vision of ancient Rome explodes into widescreen life with a sprawling cast and a sense of scale and majesty.
It lacks the soul and emotional stakes of the first Gladiator and some of the CGI looks slapdash and unconvincing in places. A poignant closing scene echoes the first movie but also tells us that Lucius has not yet quelled the rage within. Could there be more to come from Mescal in battle dress and sandals? If it’s as fun as this meaty serving of historical pulp, bring it on.
In short, you will be entertained.
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