It has been nearly 25 years since Russell Crowe enjoyed his Oscar-winning finest hour as Maximus in Ridley Scott’s thunderous epic, Gladiator, and now Sir Ridley has brought us the next generation. Stepping up to the plate is Paul Mescal as Lucius (now known as Hanno), who finds himself an enslaved gladiator in Rome after an Imperial fleet has conquered his homeland of Numidia (Algeria, more or less).
Like the original film, which is specifically quoted several times, this one opens with a spectacular set-piece as Roman general Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal) leads his massed triremes towards the Numidian capital. It’s a tour de force of flying arrows, tumbling corpses and hurtling fireballs as the ships surge up to the ramparts. Lucius eventually finds himself washed up on the shore, having experienced a mystical vision of his wife, killed in the battle, being transported away across the waters of oblivion.
Carted back to Rome by his victorious adversaries, he immediately proves himself a fearless fighter when he’s thrown into the ring with a bunch of hideous creatures which seem to be a mashup of ape and mastiff. Lucius opts for the “man bites dog” strategy and successfully overcomes his slavering adversaries. This wins him the admiring approval of Macrinus (Denzel Washington, pictured below), who promptly buys Lucius to join his gladiator circus.
Lucius is so tough that he can even out-match Macrinus’s surly sergeant-major (Fauda’s Lior Raz). He seems to become top gladiator by default, organising his comrades as they face assorted grotesque spectacles for the amusement of the Roman hordes. Most fanciful of the lot is when the Colosseum is filled with water and the gladiators fight on ships and replicate the Battle of Salamis, while sharks circle in the water to devour anybody who has the misfortune to go overboard.
This is a massive production which harks back to a golden age of mega-budget period epics (echoes of Ben Hur, El Cid or Spartacus aren’t difficult to detect). Ancient Rome has been recreated on film many times, but Scott’s realisation of it, with a specially-built reproduction of the Colosseum, can convince you that you’re right there, right now.
The major hook for the narrative is the revelation that Lucius is the son of Lucilla (Connie Nielsen, pictured below) and her lover Maximus, though he hasn’t seen his mother for 15 years. It’s Lucius’s habit of sniffing a handful of earth before battle that alerts Lucilla to his true identity, not to mention his fondness for Maximus’s favourite poetry.
What Mescal lacks, though, is the raw animal power that Crowe brought to the Maximus role. When he growled at his commanders to “unleash hell”, you could feel the temperature rising and the air growing difficult to breathe. But for all his fighting skills, Mescal’s Lucius seems a rather reserved and thoughtful character, not the kind of gung-ho dynamo you could see inspiring his comrades to stiffen the sinews and summon up the blood. Crowe could deliver a stare of slit-eyed, feral menace, but when the scheming Macrinus assures Lucius that “rage is your gift”, we don’t feel that smouldering off the screen.
Despite this handicap, there’s plenty to seize the eye and the ear throughout the two-and-a-half hour running time. Nielsen has been given space to expand on the Lucilla character, and she brings some genuine nuance and feeling to the role, while Pascal’s Acacius reveals hidden depths as a man wearied by years of gruelling military campaigning. He’s now ready to throw his hat in the ring and try to bring about a more just and equitable Rome, which is being run by the ludicrous twin emperors Geta and Caracalla. Played by a ginger-haired Fred Heckinger, Caracalla could pass for Ed Sheeran’s idiot twin brother, and makes his pet monkey Dundus a consul.
In supporting roles, Tim McInnerny has fun as the dissolute, ineffectual Thraex, and Matt Lucas gets a spot as the Colosseum’s wildly camp Master of Ceremonies. A nice touch is Derek Jacobi’s return as Senator Gracchus, whom he also played in Gladiator. And finally, kudos to Denzel Washington for his portrayal of Macrinus, a devious and unscrupulous operator who has his greedy eyes on the greatest of prizes.
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