Gladiator 2 Spoiler Free Review

 Gladiator 2

Genre: Historical Action

Director: Ridley Scott

Released: 2024




     In the interest of full transparency, I feel it necessary to inform you that I don't love the original Gladiator. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a pretty good, entertaining popcorn flick, but I've never been able to see the satisfying, compelling characters or resounding, moving drama that others insist elevate the film beyond the status of competent but unremarkable action fare.
     
     I say this in part because I just want to get my Gladiator hot take off my chest, but more importantly to hopefully dispel any doubts about my ability to approach its sequel objectively. I have no great attachment to or affection for the original Gladiator, so when I tell you that Gladiator 2 is kind of not great, I hope you will not attribute that stance to a surfeit of over-protective love for its older sibling. 

     I would say that Gladiator 2's issues can generally be boiled down to a lack of focus. It has a strong cast benefitted by our greatest working actor Denzel Washington, and none of them turn in a poor performance, but all of them feel like they're fighting for screen time as the story lurches awkwardly amongst their different storylines. Because none of the distinct threads are integrated particularly well, scenes have a habit of feeling disconnected from the ones preceding and proceeding them. A scene concerning main character Hanno's (Paul Mescal) burning need for revenge is set awkwardly between a scene featuring Macrinus' (Denzel) politicking and one following conflicted general Acacius (the suddenly ubiquitous Pedro Pascal) just kind of hanging out with Lucilla (Connie Nielsen). To be fair, most of these characters are at least somewhat interesting, and each one is worthy of a deeper exploration in a more focused film, but because the movie has so many spinning plates it's trying to keep tabs on, none of them feel developed or compelling. 

     That leads to a distinct sense of weightlessness pervading the characters' decisions and various fates. Frequently big, blow out moments intended to portray the culmination of one arc or another fall painfully flat because there hasn't been enough time spent with each individual character to justify these decisions, something that Hanno is most guilty of. I can't go into it without spoiling things, but frequently he would make choices and take actions that left me and my brother with whom I saw the film pretty baffled. 

     Scenes set in the colosseum fare better, although they also suffer from a feeling of weightlessness, given that the story doesn't really progress in these moments (one of the strengths of the original, I felt, was that the scenes of gladiatorial combat did feel like they appreciably drove the narrative forward). They're pretty brief, and definitely constitute less of the movie than the political maneuvering does, but they certainly offer an entertaining spectacle thanks to some strong choreography and camerawork. 

     The question you may have, then, is: are those scenes worth the price of a ticket? Unfortunately not, in my opinion. I can't say that I hated Gladiator 2; I'm a huge fan of Denzel and there's undoubtedly entertainment to be had here, but unless you are really into any of these actors or this kind of conceit, I don't think you would be poorly served by just waiting to stream or rent it.



D+

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In Praise of Cormac McCarthy

                                                                      UPDATE      Recently Vanity Fair published an article detailing a decades long infatuation and frequently romantic relationship Cormac McCarthy had with a girl who was sixteen at the time of their first meeting and seventeen when they became intimately involved. McCarthy himself was forty two. I have only read this article and a handful of reactions to it, but there currently seems to be no reason to doubt the veracity of its account. Responses seem to have been generally negative, seeing as how the article itself was bizarrely favorable towards this relationship and the relationship itself was illegal and ethically dubious. This is the article , which I encourage everyone to read and thereby conclude for themselves their feelings ...
Read more

Extraction 2

EXTRACTION 2 Genre: Action thriller Director: Sam Hargrave Released: 2023     The first Extraction movie, released in 2020 on Netflix, was a pretty popular film. It didn't exactly hit with critics, but audiences hungry for simple, unpretentious, blockbusting fun (that didn't involve capes or laser-eyes) devoured it and made it one of Netflix's biggest hits of the year. This inevitably led to a sequel, which I heard about whilst perusing Rotten Tomatoes and, having nothing better to do on a quiet Tuesday night, compelled me to take in both movies in one sitting.      The first movie can only be described as Call of Duty: the Movie. It features a gruff, stony-faced military man as our protagonist, he fights through the grimy streets of a foreign city against wave upon wave of faceless NPCs, and most injuries can be recovered from by hunkering down for a bit until the screen clears of all the bloody splotches and the sound of a beating heart fades away. The action ...
Read more

Every Coen Brothers Movie Ranked

Image
Every Coen Brothers Movie Ranked from Worst to Best       As anyone who has listened to the podcast can tell you, I am a longtime fan of the directing duo Joel and Ethan Coen. It is the opinion of this reviewer that the Coens have released some of the finest motion pictures ever committed to the silver screen. Because I've been too busy with moving this week to watch a movie for the blog and recently closed out their filmography, then, I've decided to instead give you what you've all been waiting for(?) and rank their each and every film from worst to best for your reading pleasure!  #18) Barton Fink      We begin with the only Coen brothers movie about which I truly have nothing positive to say. While their dramas tend to be relatively straightforward in their execution, Coen brothers movies that lean more comedic tend to navigate an exceedingly delicate balance among sometimes contradictory forces of drama, pathos, and surrealism or what you might ca...
Read more