150 Word Review: 'Gladiator II' (2024)
Strength and honor? In this economy?
Denzel Washington is having fun in Gladiator II. As conniving slave trader Macrinus, the two-time Oscar winner smirks and speechifies while fiddling with a decapitated head. And he does it with panache.
Director Ridley Scott returns to Rome but doesn't take himself quite so seriously this time. This isn't a high tragedy. Gladiator II is trashier than the celebrated original; it’s a true B-movie in the spirit of Golden Age Hollywood's sword-and-sandals epics, back when Americans wanted stories about failed empires.
But this didn't have to be a sequel to a 24-year-old movie. It could have just been a hyper-violent, historically inaccurate action movie starring sensitive fury hunk Paul Mescal. Mescal doesn't have Crowe's gravitas, but his warm smile melts the hearts of those who are about to die. Gladiator II has everything I like in a film: marvelous costumes, fatty dialogue, and an axe-wielding berserker riding a battle rhino.