The 591st film I have seen in theaters…

Spoilers below

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16 years after the death of Marcus Aurelius, a Numidian slave named “Hanno” is purchased by the ambitious Macrinus and brought to Rome to fight in the Colosseum. As the 2 Emperors rule over a divided Rome, Macrinus schemes and “Hanno” seeks revenge against a Roman General who wronged him. Little does everyone know, “Hanno” has a secret.

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Paul Mescal is “Hanno”, actually the kid from Gladiator: Lucius Verus Aurelius. He did a fine job imitating Russell Crowe, and inexplicably Gerard Butler, in the role. I found his writing a bit flat though; I never quite bought his plot twists or motivations. Pedro Pascal is the noble General Acacius. He was my favorite character in the film, based entirely on Pascal’s acting & charisma. This guy can be in the shittiest movies and come out smelling like a rose.

Our villains are Denzel Washington, somewhat controversially cast as Macrinus and Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger as Emperors Geta and Caracalla. All did quite well and brought terrific performances. Washington was overacting the shit out of this but it was not outside the scope of the role.

Our legacy cast is Connie Nielsen as Princess Lucilla and Derek Jacobi as Senator Gracchus. Fine actors, who did a fine job. Not much to say without delving into spoilers. They were a nice connection to the original, but Jacobi was wasted.

This movie was fine. Soulless, but fine. The original was an action packed drama with terrific actors putting on an excellent show. This is the same, like almost exactly the same, but the story was not as compelling. This may be controversial for a movie called “Gladiator” but I almost feel like having Gladiators being at the center of it was an error. If it was a straight up story of Imperial scheming between generals and senators it would have been fine. The gladiator element was actually unnecessary. It comes off like a knock-off of the original, which it is. That said, its a good knock-off, not a great one though. The action was gory and fun and, as I said, the actors were great, particularly the villains. The CGI animals were pretty shitty though. This was a safe sequel. I would have almost preferred the batshit original script which has Maximus return from the dead and fight for 2000 years in various wars. lol.

6/10

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