As the Romans Do: GLADIATOR II

Ridley Scott’s Gladiator movies work by wrapping sports movie logic around the trappings of ancient warfare. They meet in the bloody overlap between the two genres. Armies clashing are distilled down to opponents in the arena. It has the basic structure of competition—the athlete with promise rising through the ranks, suffering some precarious setbacks, and then emerging victorious in the end—to drive it through its Ancient Roman intrigue. The sequel even adds a complicated coach for its scrappy warrior, as Denzel Washington, wielding his charisma with a light, playful touch, swoops in to mentor an underdog gladiator. That underdog, played by Paul Mescal, who here adds a flavoring of muscle to his sad-young-man persona, turns out to be the long lost son of Russell Crowe’s heroic gladiator from the first film. So it’s the Creed of Gladiator movies, though never quite that serious, despite its efforts to bend a knee to its predecessor. Scott clearly has the urge to enjoy recreating the earlier film’s setting and mood. He whips up the spectacle of the Coliseum with all its attendant echoes of our modern stadiums—box seats, preening announcers, and a crowd clamoring for action. The combat is as bone-crunching, blood-spouting, and brutal as expected. Add a rhinoceros or a monkey and it gets even gnarlier.

Overall, the sequel is a little less interested in wallowing in tragic backstory, although it’s there, and a little more amped up with political intrigue and class warfare. This Rome is crumbling under vain boyish twin emperors (Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger), a fine vector for Scott’s recent interest in the slimy eccentricities of the super-wealthy. Sensing their weakness, Washington’s scheming aristocrat is planning to use his gladiators to grow his social status and angle for more power. Meanwhile, a celebrated general (Pedro Pascal) and his wife (Connie Nielsen, returning from the first film) plot a coup of their own. Mescal will end up a pawn in these competing plots unless he can wrest control of the narrative for himself. Hard to do in chains. Easier when given a sword. (Also, good luck having us root against Washington’s ostensible villain, who elevates the movie in his every moment on screen.) The result is a fine, thin sword-and-sandal spectacle, with galloping horses and hurtling weapons and splats of gore. Its actors are having fun, and Scott’s such a pro at helming these period-piece action efforts that he could do it in his sleep. (With his worst movies, you might suspect he has.) It’s not a great movie, but it’s often a fun one, full of diverting period detail and exaggeration and committed to its live-by-the-sword, die-by-the-sword ethos. Washington stares Mescal down early in the movie and explains: “Violence is the universal language.”