Ridley Scott’s 2000 sword-and-sandal epic “Gladiator” closed on a memorable shot that became an indelible image associated with the film: Russell Crowe’s hand, callused and battle-worn, softly caressing strands of wheat, as his character Maximus makes his way home to some place in the afterlife. Scott references this peaceful image in the opening of his sequel, “Gladiator II.” Rough, thick hands, toughened by farming and fighting, plunge into a sack of harvested grain, feeling the fruits of their labor.
These two similar shots become the thesis of this faithful sequel. It is the same movie, slightly tweaked and constantly referencing and reminding you of the original, delivering what you already loved about “Gladiator”: strength and honor, bread and circuses, blood and guts.
The hands that open “Gladiator II” belong to Lucius (Paul Mescal), the son of Maximus and Lucilla (Connie Nielsen). Once the crown prince of Rome, he was forced to flee at age 12 for his safety, and is now a humble farmer in Numidia, North Africa. He and his wife (Yuval Gonen) live an idyllic life of domestic bliss, interrupted by Roman incursions. It’s after one such incursion, led by Gen. Acacius (Pedro Pascal), that Lucius returns to his home city, now an enslaved gladiator and a grieving widower, just as his father was.
Lucius has a knack for showmanship, with moves he stole from Maximus, but he’s more feral, going tooth-to-tooth with a nasty baboon in a podunk ring outside the city. His ferociousness catches the eye of gladiator agent Macrinus (Denzel Washington), much in the same way Maximus caught the eye of Proximo (Oliver Reed), and Macrinus is going to make Lucius a star.
This is a film of doubles, repeated characters, dual identities and twice the violence in the Colosseum. Twin emperors rule Rome in an uneasy brotherly alliance. You liked one creepy Joaquin Phoenix in the first movie? How about two? Faces painted white, surrounded by concubines of every gender, Emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) are utterly taken with the barbarian who can recite Virgil while covered in another man’s blood, after Macrinus presents Lucius in a private showcase. He becomes the toast of the Colosseum, leading the other gladiators to victory against rhinos, sharks and all manner of human and animal beast.
Lucius is hellbent on revenge against Acacius, while his mother Lucilla (Nielsen, returning) is desperate to save her son from the Colosseum. Elsewhere, Washington’s Macrinus has his own designs on power in Rome. Therein lies the Achilles’ heel of “Gladiator II” — there is simply too much plot to truly care about these characters.
Because there’s so much going on, with multiple double-crosses, backstabbings, front-stabbings, politicking (and also the sharks), what “Gladiator II” is lacking from its forebear is sophisticated storytelling, deep character work and nuanced messaging. The new film’s story (by David Scarpa and Peter Craig) falls a bit flat because it tells you what it’s about right on the surface.
If “Gladiator” was Scott’s thinly veiled movie about Hollywood, an allegory about the business of creating entertainment for a fickle crowd and a patron who lazily gives thumbs up and down from on high, then “Gladiator II” is his not-so-thinly-veiled “democracy movie” (or “politics” as Washington flamboyantly spits). The subtext is text as Lucius delivers several speeches about “the dream of Rome” that he learned about at the knee of his grandfather, Marcus Aurelius.
Though the script falters, the spectacle does not and “Gladiator II” is the best-looking Scott film in years. Bright and bloody, sandblasted and sunworn, it has the visual crispness of the first and doesn’t bear the strange desaturated look of some of the director’s recent work. The afterlife visions that Lucius experiences are as aesthetically distinct as the ones in the original film, but rendered in high-contrast black and white, setting them apart.
The cast is uniformly excellent, including the peacocking Washington, chewing the scenery, and the soulful Mescal, looking like the statue of David come to life in fierce, brutal form. Mescal has an element of unpredictable wildness, and when it’s allowed to come out it’s transfixing, though he’s largely kept on a leash, save for a few memorable scenes. Nielsen is radiant as Lucilla, 25 years after she first played the role, and achieves a bit of redemption for the character. Quinn and Hechinger revel in the ickiness of their dear leaders.
“Gladiator II” maps closely onto the original film’s structure and style, so there’s not much about it that is surprising or unexpected. The film itself is a son, made from the same DNA in the same image. It is the only “Gladiator” sequel that could possibly exist and exactly what you expect, for better or for worse. Are you not entertained?
Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.
