Movie Review: Gladiator 2

 

Michael's Movie Grade: B-

Belated sequel to the Oscar winning fan favorite is fan but nothing really special. 

Of course, being a Ridley Scott film, this movie does feel larger than life. Ridley Scott is a master at making epics feel purely epic. He does that here in spades. The scenes in the colosseum are pure cinematic spectacle at its finest and even the battle scenes outside the colosseum feel larger than life. The performances are also often times great. Paul Mescal, Connie Neilson, Denzel Washington and Pedro Pascal, all give an air of believability and humanity to what are otherwise pretty standard characters. The story arc for our main character is a very good one (even if it could have been fleshed out more) that is at times both smart and relatable. 

The dialogue is often pretty hit and miss in this movie. There are some great lines of dialogue here that are very intelligent but there are also some which are embarrassingly corny. 

This movie does a tonal problem with it. At times this is a serious drama with real social commentary and at other times it is very campy and over the top. Though both these parts work on their own, they do not really mesh together. This movie also has so many characters and gives many of them their own plots. The problem is that even at nearly 2 and a half hours there are still too many plots for them to be properly fleshed out.

Despite the story problems, this movie does have a real sense of spectacle and great performances. While this probably won't receive the accolades of its predecessor, it works well enough.