Michael Dunn’s review published on Letterboxd:
YOU WILL BE (mostly) ENTERTAINED!
While Gladiator is a revenge story where Maximus fights to avenge the loss of his family, Gladiator II begins as a similar story but morphs into a man fighting for his city and what it can represent.
This movie easily could’ve been a thematic remake of the original, but the second half of this film proves it has something new to say. Ridley Scott leans into his strength of directing massive set pieces with hundreds of extras that make the battles feel immersive and monumental. The visual effects don’t always line up with his vision, but the grand scope of this movie is exactly what audiences would want from this legacy sequel.
And yet it still feels like there was a better film somewhere inside of this one because, like Rome, this movie needed commanding. And who better to steer this movie in the right direction than Denzel Washington, whose cunning bureaucrat of a character is one of the year’s very best. Thank goodness too, because Paul Mescal largely feels miscast in the role of Lucius, often lacking the primal rage and emotion that Russell Crowe embodied in the original. Mescal is extremely talented, but in the past has largely played complex, layered characters like his ultra-subtle performance in Aftersun that doesn’t quite translate here. Luckily, much of that slack is picked up by the fantastic Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger who are magnetic whenever they are on screen.
Despite its faults, Gladiator II includes some stellar performances and set pieces that are likely to satisfy fans, but unlike the original it will not be echoing into eternity.
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