Film Review - Gladiator II (2024)

Gladiator II is the highly anticipated sequel to 2000’s Gladiator which helped bring Ridley Scott back to revelance after a period of doldrums in the 1990’s, brought Russell Crowe to international stardom and an Academy Award for Best Actor and won Best Picture at the Academy Awards as well, this time Paul Mescal plays a farmer who’s land is conquered by a Roman General (Pedro Pascal) and he is taken to Rom as a slave for the Gladiator Games where his fight and tenacity catch the attention of a slave trader (Denzel Washington) who sees in him a path towards a much bigger prize.

Gladiator II was a film that I did not have a lot of high hopes for mainly because Ridley Scott’s output over the last 10-15 years has left a lot to be desired as many of those films were either Stodgy (The Counselor), stupid (Prometheus, House of Gucci) or just laughably bad (Exodus: Gods and Kings) and his previous film prior to this one was Napoleon which was shockingly bad with its focus on a man who conquered most of the known world and transformed France being as a petulant manchild rater than a fascist emperor.

But surprisingly Gladiator II is easily Ridley’s best film for me since the Martian in 2015 (2021’s The Last Duel was okay but discomforting to watch at times) and this definitely a film that is worth watching on a big cinema screen as the Gladiator games in this movie are fantastic be it fights with a Rhino, a flooded Roman Colosseum with boats and sharks, fights with Baboons that look like they came off of the Hunger Games set and plenty of hand to hand combat fights that Ridley Scott directs the crap out of and puts many of his contemporaries to shame with his work here.

As for the performances, Paul Mescal is fine but at times he struggles to fill the big hole left behind by Russell Crowe’s Maximus from the first film, Connie Nielsen is solid here but isn’t given a huge amount to do, Pedro Pascal is watchable but like Nielsen doesn’t get a huge amount to do while Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger are fun as the dual emperors of Rome who enjoy all the power and wealth and debauchery at their fingertips.

But this movie belongs to one man and one man alone and that is Mr Denzel Washington who reaffirmed in my mind that he is quite simply the man as he devours every scene he’s in with relish and skill that makes chewing the scenery look like an artform and in his hands it is and every moment he’s on screen you have a big smile on your face as he plots and schemes his way to power while turning on that unmistakable Denzel charm and badassery that makes you can’t help but love him.

As for the films script well at times it’s a bit of mess not unlike Beetlejuice 2 was back in September, there’s at least 2 or 3 separate stories going on here that at times each of them struggles for screen time and one is pretty quickly dealt with while another heads to a somewhat anti climatic finish which is a shame but I wasn’t as bothered with it here like I was in Napoleon last year.

And so that was Gladiator II and it is a fun spectacle with a performance by Denzel that deserves to net him an Oscar, never has one man carried a film on his back so much and make it look easy while also chewing the scenery like it’s an all you can eat buffet, 3 out of 5.