When Denzel Washington sweeps into “Gladiator II” — Ridley Scott’s epic about ancient Rome and men at war and sometimes in love — it’s with such easy grace that you may mistake his character’s loose bearing with indifference. What you’re seeing is power incarnate, power that’s so raw and so supremely self-possessed that it doesn’t announce itself. It just takes. And it keeps taking as warriors enter the Colosseum to fight and die in the blood sport that gives this sequel to Scott’s 2000 drama “Gladiator” its sober backdrop and much of its juice. It is a performance of charismatic evil and of mesmerizing stardom both.
Like Scott’s filmmaking in this pleasurably immersive spectacle — with its foreign ancients and mentalities, exotic animals and equally unfamiliar calls to human nobility — Washington’s performance has skill, intensity and absolute confidence. Each man has an unqualified belief in entertainment as a value that’s essential to put over an old-fashioned, inherently audacious production like this, the kind that turns the past into a plaything and doesn’t ask you to worry about niceties like historical accuracy. Both director and performer are also veterans when it comes to popular audiences, and since neither has mellowed or slowed with age (Scott turns 87 this year and Washington 70), they still know how to put on a great show.
The first “Gladiator” centers on a Roman general, Maximus (Russell Crowe), who circa 180 A.D. serves an aged emperor, incurs the wrath of a young usurper and ends up clanging swords in the Colosseum, where he quickly becomes a crowd favorite. Crowe, then at the height of his leading-man fame, delivered an appropriately muscular if characteristically sensitive lead performance that holds the screen even when challenged by the vulpine charisma of a scene-stealing Joaquin Phoenix as the new emperor. The two characters are dead by the end and Rome itself seems like it may follow rapidly in their wake; they and all the other ghosts from the original movie haunt the sequel, which is set 16 years later.
“Gladiator II” tells the story of another righteous, ostensibly simple man, this time named Lucius (Paul Mescal) who is swept up by violent political forces seemingly beyond his control. The story opens in Numidia, a slice of land hugging the northernmost coast of the African continent. There, in a humming city, Lucius lives with his wife, and while their smiles suggest they’re happy enough, they are both soon suiting up to fight a flotilla of Roman invaders. Led by General Acacius (Pedro Pascal), the Romans make quick work of the Numidians. In this regard, the invaders are just as ruthlessly economic as Scott, who demonstrates a commensurate show of his power with the epically scaled, vividly staged and shot warfare.
Fast, brutal and absorbing, the shocker opener sets the template for the rest of the movie, which plays — and often feels — like one long, inventively diverse, elaborately imaginative fight. As in the first film, the diversity of the casting here suggests the vastness of the Roman Empire, a variety that’s matched by the many ways characters die: trebuchet, arrow, sword and a (digital) menagerie that includes a saddled rhino and a troop of rampaging baboons. Every so often, the characters put down their weapons to indulge their other vices or to plot an uprising, diverting interludes that advance the narrative and add crucial rhythm, giving the characters enough time to unclench the jaws and for you to keep processing the story.
“Gladiator II” doesn’t stray far from the original film — an image of hands and grain pointedly underscores the connections — in either its plotting or fuzzy notions about Roman honor and glory. Written by David Scarpa, who hatched the story with Peter Craig, the sequel follows Lucius who, after his wife dies, is taken prisoner. Shipped off and tossed about, he ends up in a hellscape where he proves his warrior bona fides to Washington’s Macrinus, a wealthy gladiator wrangler. A power player with a heavy past and a plan for the future, Macrinus buys Lucius to fight in the Colosseum before throngs of Romans, whose blood lust and political restlessness (or anomie) is sated by the displays of cruelty. It’s very relatable.
Mescal, a young Irish actor who seemed to come out of nowhere a few years ago, has a handful of credits in the sort of modest, independent movies that first screen at festivals (“All of Us Strangers”). He’s a charismatic screen presence, one that’s appealingly gentle but has enough heat and ambiguity that it isn’t a surprise that he’s played Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire” (and will again in a forthcoming New York production). Mescal has bulked up considerably for “Gladiator II” and doesn’t seem altogether comfortable with his newly jacked body, an unease that works for his character’s psychological and physical vulnerability. He doesn’t have Crowe’s natural swagger; he holds you more stealthily.
Not long after Lucius is captured, the story divides into threads that eventually weave together. The Rome of the sequel is even more barbaric and unsettled than before; there are more scurrying, whispering conspirators and showy exhibits of decadence. The wonderful cast (a Scott signature) features an array of interesting new and familiar faces, including some from the first film: Connie Nielsen as the sad-eyed royal, Lucilla, and Derek Jacobi as a senator, Gracchus. (Tim McInnerny, as a dissipated senator, adds delectably unsavory notes.) As the giggly, extravagantly sadistic young twin emperors, Joseph Quinn (as Geta) and Fred Hechinger (Caracalla), are persuasively venal and look so pale that it’s almost a surprise they have any blood in their veins to spill. Spoiler: It spills.
The first “Gladiator” was one of Scott’s unqualified successes. It was well reviewed, at least by critics who were more interested in his directing than in the weaknesses of the script; it was also a sizable box-office hit and nominated for a dozen Oscars (winning some biggies, including best picture and actor). Given the recent commercial landscape, which for the past few decades has been dominated by superhero movies — many tailored for fans rather than for the general viewership that “Gladiator” solicited — the first film’s mass draw now seems the most old-school thing about it. Despite its contemporary sheen, its digital tools and graphic violence, “Gladiator” hit with audiences because of its old Hollywood-style appeal.
Scott is working with considerably more sophisticated digital tools in the sequel, which add to the verisimilitude that makes it easy to slip into the movie and happily stay there. Even when the story tests your credulity (sharks cruising in the flooded Colosseum is the least of it) Scott holds you fast with his actors, the dynamism of his filmmaking, with shocks of beauty and jolts of queasy humor. Very few directors working today can put across a movie like “Gladiator II” as convincingly, which perhaps explains why the sequel — for all its barbaric violence and the plaintive, at times stirring, discussions about justice and democracy — doesn’t have the mournful quality that the first film did. Scott clearly had a blast making this movie and so did Washington, and they’re inviting you to have one, too, which proves easy.
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