Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II opens in much the same way as the first: with the unleashing of hell. This time round, however, our hero Lucius (Paul Mescal), the illegitimate son of Russell Crowe’s Maximus, isn’t the one doing the unleashing. He’s a humble farmer – cue a hands-through-wheat shot, though this time the grain has been harvested – and also a conscript in the Numidian army, which is amassing on the walls of one of the northern African province’s fortified ports. Why? Because the Roman Army, led by general Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), has a phalanx of galleons en route.
The Mediterranean sun is beating down on both sides – and is joined soon enough by showers of arrows and blazing projectiles that arc through the air like flaming Christmas puddings. As battle is met, one poor unfortunate gets skewered to the frame of his own trebuchet by a bolt from a rival ballista. That’s Scott setting the grisly tone – but also sending the viewer a message. For the next two and a half hours, matey, your attention’s going nowhere.
It should be said right away that Scott’s long-awaited real-time sequel – set and released 20-some years after his Oscar-winning original – isn’t quite as strong as its predecessor. But it’s worth saying straight after that Gladiator II is still the year’s most relentlessly entertaining blockbuster: a Roman epic that can’t resist Roman all over the place. The film zig-zags madly from ribald comedy to sweeping action, then quivering melodrama, with servants gliding in and out of the shadows.
If the original Gladiator was the cinematic equivalent of a six-course meal, think of this one as an exploding buffet table. Yet despite its tonal unruliness and extraordinary sweep – Scott’s Constable-like compositional eye is put to good use yet again – it’s a rivetingly lean and energised watch. Mescal’s Lucius wants revenge on Rome, the city which killed his father, sent him into exile as a child, murdered his friends and common-law wife… a long list.