148 min | R | November 22, 2024 | Paramount Pictures
Ridley Scott returns to the Colosseum twenty-four years later. Paul Mescal fights well. Denzel Washington steals everything. The film cannot escape its predecessor’s shadow but it fights hard.
Lucius is the son of Maximus and Lucilla. He was sent away from Rome as a child to protect him from the empire that killed his father. He has grown up in Numidia. He has a wife. He has a life. Rome invades and destroys it. Lucius is captured and sold into slavery and trained as a gladiator. He fights his way to the Colosseum to take revenge against the empire. The bones of the first Gladiator are here. The orphaned son. The corrupt emperors. The arena as political theater. Ridley Scott and screenwriter David Scarpa rebuild the structure with new characters and new stakes. The twin emperors Geta and Caracalla are petulant tyrants. Macrinus is a former slave turned power broker who uses gladiators as political weapons. Lucilla is still alive and still navigating imperial politics. The machinery of empire grinds on.
Paul Mescal plays Lucius with a physical intensity that fills the arena sequences with genuine force. He is leaner and angrier than Russell Crowe’s Maximus. Where Maximus fought with weary nobility, Lucius fights with raw fury. Mescal makes the rage feel personal rather than righteous. Denzel Washington plays Macrinus and gives a performance that operates on a different level than everything around it. He is magnetic and terrifying and funny and Washington clearly relishes every moment. Macrinus is a manipulator who has built his power through observation and patience and Washington plays every scene as a man enjoying his own chess game. Pedro Pascal plays General Acacius with conflicted authority. Connie Nielsen returns as Lucilla with the political intelligence the role demands. Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger play the twin emperors with varying degrees of instability.
Scott floods the Colosseum with water for a naval battle. He fills it with sharks. He stages gladiatorial combat with rhinoceroses and war chariots. The spectacle is enormous and Scott shoots it with the confidence of a director who has been orchestrating large-scale action for five decades. The cinematography by John Mathieson, who shot the original, creates a visual continuity between the films. The production design by Arthur Max reconstructs Rome with the same monumental scale. The action choreography is more elaborate than the original and the visual effects integrate digital and practical work with varying success. Harry Gregson-Williams replaces Hans Zimmer on the score and the music is competent without reaching the iconic heights of the original.
The film’s central problem is the film that came before it. The first Gladiator told a complete story. Maximus lived and fought and died and the ending was final. This sequel must justify its existence against that finality. It does so through spectacle and through Washington’s performance and through Mescal’s physical commitment. It does not do so through its story, which repeats the original’s beats with diminishing returns. Scott is eighty-seven years old and still directing with more energy than filmmakers half his age. The ambition is admirable. The execution is impressive. The necessity is questionable.