Gladiator II

January 22 & 23 ONLY

7:00 pm nightly
1:30 Thursday Matinée
PG — 2hr 28min
2024 ‧ Action / Adventure

By far the best popcorn film of the year, Gladiator II opens 16 years after the death of Russell Crowe’s Maximus with an impressively staged battle sequence that establishes a time of great violence and a pair of central characters: the Roman General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal) and a refugee from Rome named Lucius Verus aka “Hanno” (Paul Mescal). Acacius leads his soldiers on an assault that results in the death of Lucius’s wife, setting him up as the enemy that Lucius will have to topple in the Colosseum, but David Scarpa’s script isn’t that straightforward. It’s revealed quickly that Acacius is married to Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), the partner of Maximus from the first film, and things get really messy when it’s revealed that Lucius is the son that Lucilla sent off to safety years earlier. That’s right. It’s Maximus 2.0.

Paul Mescal is the “mesmerising centre” of Ridley Scott’s long-awaited Gladiator sequel, which balances emotional drama and social themes with all-out action spectacle. How can you not love a film that has swords, sandals, sharks in the flooded Roman Colosseum, Denzel Washington in flowing robes and Paul Mescal biting a baboon? There’s much more than that, both serious and camp, in Ridley Scott’s exhilarating and fun sequel to Gladiator, which won the Oscar for best picture nearly a quarter of a century ago. Full of spectacle and spectacular performances, Gladiator II will keep you spellbound.

Under its crowd-pleasing surface, though, the film’s theme of political power, of who wields it and how, is strong and purposeful, and Scott weaves it into a colourful show. Asked by The New York Times if he saw a connection between his Roman Empire and the political world today, Scott bluntly answered: “Yeah. If we don’t watch it we’re getting worse,” adding: “I try and keep that in the forefront” in the film, pointing to some of Lucius’s questions about what Rome values. “Is this how Rome treats its heroes?” Lucius yells from the arena when one of them is killed. With some of the best war and combat scenes of all time – if you loved Gladiator, you’ll enjoy this too.