I didn't adore Gladiator, but I appreciated the melodramatic conviction at its core, the way it was unabashedly emotional about grief and justice and restoring order to the world. Gladiator II echoes elements from the first film, including talk of the 'dream of Rome' as a more egalitarian place, but while that idea is more central to the plot in the sequel, it feels even more abstract. Rome in this film isn't solid enough to require saving or destruction - it's a series of historical interiors the characters pass through. It's only when characters fight that the movie comes alive.
Scott holds you fast with his actors, the dynamism of his filmmaking, with shocks of beauty and jolts of queasy humor. Very few directors working today can put across a movie like Gladiator II as convincingly, which perhaps explains why the sequel - for all its barbaric violence and the plaintive, at times stirring, discussions about justice and democracy - doesn't have the mournful quality that the first film did. Scott clearly had a blast making this movie and so did Washington, and they're inviting you to have one, too, which proves easy.
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