Ridley Scott’s long-in-the-making Gladiator sequel is finally here, and the world’s buffest film critics have assembled to wrestle it to the ground like a charging rhino in Rome’s Colosseum.
And the early verdicts are largely positive. The UK’s New Statesman calls it a ‘triumph’. Across the pond, Entertainment Weekly notes: ‘With Gladiator II, Ridley Scott reminds us why, at 86, he's still one of the most invigorating filmmakers around.’ ‘A thunderous sword-and-sandals epic with the devil in its eye,’ writes Time Out.
The Guardian praises Paul Mescal’s ‘charismatic and likeable’ performance, noting that ‘there is something awe-inspiring in seeing Mescal’s triumphal march into the A-list’. The Playlist agrees, writing that ’Mescal’s affinity for conveying tumultuous emotions, plus his chiselled physique here, serves Scott’s tale well’.
There’s praise, too, for Denzel Washington as the scheming slave owner Macrinus. ‘A stellar Washington rather eclipses the rest of the cast,’ writes Robbie Collin in The Telegraph. ‘Washington deliciously steals every scene in this rousing heir to the Oscar-winning classic,’ agrees The Daily Beast.
Not everyone is as fulsome, with complaints about the movie’s narrative similarities with 2000’s Gladiator. ‘We have a different gladiator and two evil emperors, but a lot of Gladiator II is familiar to the point of redundance,’ writes The Wrap. ‘There’s a déjà vu quality to much of the new film,’ agrees The Hollywood Reporter, ‘a slavishness that goes beyond the caged men forced to fight for their survival’. ‘What’s Latin for “Groundhog Day”?’ wonders The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw.
Read our review of Gladiator II.
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