Today I will be doing a spoiler-free review on Gladiator 2. This movie came out towards the end of November, and it has rightfully done very well at the box office. It is not easy to make a sequel 24 years after its award-winning predecessor, but Ridley Scott and his cast nailed it. I’m gonna start off by saying it is not as good as the original, but I don’t think anyone legitimately expected it to be. This movie takes place years after the original, but the ending of the original still has a huge effect on this movie. This movie follows Lucius and how he must enter the colosseum after the powerful emperors of Rome conquer his home. With all the rage inside of him, he looks to the past to find the strength and honor needed to return the glory of Rome to its people. Paul Mescal is the lead in this movie as Lucius, and his performance alone is a good enough reason to watch this movie. He absolutely knocks it out of the park and deserves any and all praise he gets for this. I definitely expect him to be in Oscar nominations for his performance, and he deserves it completely. In fact, the only times I felt like the movie wasn’t clicking, is when he wasn’t on screen. That alone just shows the impact he had and how good he was in this role.
There are multiple antagonists in this movie and I can’t even just pick one. At first, it looks like General Acacius is going to be the main antagonist, however that did not last. Pedro Pascal plays him and I think he did a very good job at portraying what they wanted out of this character. There is another antagonist that isn’t truly revealed as an antagonist until towards the end so I won’t give that away. There is also Emperor Geta who I personally loved. Joseph Quinn has been getting casted in a bunch of movies as of late, and he completely deserves it. Quinn portrays the craziness of Geta very well and just knocks it out of the park. Another main character in this movie is Macrinus played by Denzel Washington. As you would expect from a Denzel role, he is absolutely phenomenal. Easily the second-best performance and character in this movie behind Mescal. I also believe that Denzel should be in Oscar talks for Best Supporting Actor when nominations start rolling out. Besides all of the insane actors, I loved the action sequences in this. The choreography along with the cinematography just made some insane action sequences that everyone needs to see. The score is very good and used in the correct moments. The plot is also very good and they tell it very well throughout the whole movie. My only real complaint is I felt like the pacing was off at times and like I said earlier when Mescal wasn’t on screen it got a little more boring.
I always rate movies and I rate them based on 10 things in the movie. Those things are: emotion, acting, cinematography, pacing, score, side characters, ending, plot, main character, and dialogue. I gave this movie a 86/100, the characters and cinematography are easily my favorite things about this movie. Only thing that drags it down a bit is the pacing as I mentioned before. It isn’t bad but it definitely could’ve been better.
