Gladiator II (2024) Review

 the story: Nearly twenty years after Maximus took on Commodus with the fate of the Roman Empire at stake, his story unexpectedly concludes.

rating: ****

review: As someone who's enjoyed Ridley Scott's stream of historical epics since Gladiator, I figured I was in a good position to understand his vision for its much anticipated and also much delayed sequel.  From Kingdom of Heaven to Robin Hood to Exodus: Gods and Kings to The Last Duel to Napoleon, I found his meditations on the complexities of leadership brilliant.  Gladiator II, I determined, was much the same.

It's not at the same level as Gladiator or Last Duel, but it's not trying to be.  Its sole mission is to finish the original narrative.  Since Russell Crowe's Maximus dies at the end of Gladiator, how exactly a sequel was supposed to happen was always going to be a challenge.  The speculation always drifted in the direction of revisiting Maximus in the afterlife, which for those keeping score who still haven't seen Gladiator II, does not happen.  Rather, the plot follows two key players from the first film as they manage lives caught up in the further turmoils of empire.

Now, Ridley Scott was never playing strictly from the historical record.  He plays fast and loose with facts, as he did the first time around.  Faster and looser, actually.  But his point isn't really fact, but rather searching for heroes.  We don't live in an era chalk full of heroes.  Or rather, we don't spend a lot of time worrying about them.  We actually go out of our way to poke holes in the halos of past heroes, which reckless abandon.  It seems relevant, in such times, to find heroes in a more creative fashion.  Actually, when you stop to wonder why all the heroes are fictional superheroes these days, it begins to make a lot more sense.  Ridley Scott found himself with a Roman superhero the first time around.  Then he simply revisited as closely as he could.

You want spoilers?  The little boy from Gladiator grew up, and through circumstances found himself repeating much of Maximus's arc.  This isn't mindless duplication.  That boy turns out to be Maximus's own child, the product of an affair with the sister of Commodus, once again played by Connie Nielsen.  If you want the compelling reason to have a movie called Gladiator II once again hinge the plot on someone being a gladiator and trying to save the empire, it's really in the dramatic potential fully realized by how Nielsen's Lucilla reacts to the agonies that follow.

Actually, the title gladiator isn't even the one who most closely follows Maximus's arc, but rather the character played by Pedro Pascal, the latest actor beloved in TV roles but constantly struggling for respect in the movies (see: James Gandolfini, Bryan Cranston), who once again acquits himself well, in case you really doubt it.  The title gladiator is played by Paul Mescal, who in his breakthrough role was never going to challenge Russell Crowe, and again, didn't need to.  The draw here is the legacy, and the outcome. Derek Jacobi is the other returning actor from the first film, though he's mostly here as a link and a demonstration of the weakness of the senate, and old man on the sidelines trying desperately to make a difference, but it's just out of his grasp.

The true calling card of the movie is Denzel Washington.  This deep into the review, and it's only here I even mention him, because it really shouldn't be necessary.  Washington's presence is the true distinguishing feature of Gladiator II, its biggest claim to be more than just a sequel to Gladiator.  It's by definition at least as much a Denzel Washington picture just by his presence.  He's showy, but not in a Training Day way.  He's not always dialed in, and he doesn't need to be.  When he has something to do, you know it, and when he's trying to hide, you know it, and that's a new kind of role for Washington, and nothing that was part of Gladiator, and everything you need to know about Gladiator II and its vision of politics pivots around that description.  

It's great filmmaking by extension.  It's utterly gratuitous in its depiction of politics, the cheat code Maximus used in the first film removed, and all the dangers reinstalled.  There are consequential deaths.  There are rewarding deaths.  They're all shocking, effective moments, some of the most deft ever depicted in film, and for that, Gladiator II earns more than it needs to, since without a Russell Crowe to root for, you wonder why you should care, and that's the reception the movie's gotten, and again, again, this is beside the point.

The point is, the story is finally finished.  Good truly prevails, even though we know the empire's rot into oblivion soldiers on anyway.  In the story of Gladiator, Marcus Aerelius had a dream that seemed unattainable, and certainly so when the hero he hoped would help him gain it is dead at the end.  At the end of Gladiator II, the hero is still standing, and so, too, is the dream.  It pivots the narrative to definitive hope.  And that's the point.

These are the times we live in.  We need heroes, even fictional ones.  It doesn't hurt to have them grounded in some grand past in the real world, even if their stories are fictional.  This is a perfect coda, and perfect storytelling, even if it isn't perfect filmmaking.