Quick Synopsis: After his home is conquered by the tyrannical emperors who now lead Rome, Lucius is forced to enter the Colosseum and must look to his past to find strength to return the glory of Rome to its people.

Some films are successful financially, some critically, some are successful in terms of their influence on pop culture and some are on my list of favourites of the year. A film rarely manages to hit all the targets. Gladiator 2 manages it. Two of those are assumptions, but they’re fairly safe ones. I wasn’t that big a fan of Ridley Scotts’ last two films (Napoleon and The Last Duel, as reviewed here and here) but Gladiator 2: Electric Boogaloo is a great example of what he can do.

The performances are all great. Surprisingly, Matt Lucas is in it. He’s only in it for around 3 minutes but evidently, that was enough for him to be named in the opening credits, which elicited a noticeable “wait, what the f*ck?” reaction in the screening I was in. Derek Jacobi seems to be in it only to make a connection with the first movie. Pedro Pascal continues to be incredible. Paul Mescal is at times brilliant, but there are a few moments where he feels too much like a character from Skins. He is genuinely one of my favourite performers so I love that he’s getting trusted to lead films like this. Denzel Washington is damn superb, injecting his character of Macrinus with a sense of dangerous playfulness.

Gladiator 2: More Lions is helped by how well-defined the characters are. Here are the characters:

A young man with a claim to the throne who is a skilled fighter, showing no mercy to those he defeats and is on a one-person mission to kill.

A general who has become jaded with the constant wars he is sent to fight in, he plans to overthrow the bloodthirsty emperors so he doesn’t have to keep watching young men die in needless wars.

A former slave with ambitions of governance and a strong sense of what is right.

A ruler thrust into a position he is ill-suited for. Since a young age, he has suffered cognitive erosion in his brain. His own brother/co-ruler clearly pities and doesn’t respect him, with his only friend being a pet monkey.

Let’s say you didn’t know this was a Gladiator movie, if you read those character synopsis, would you know FOR CERTAIN which ones are heroes and villains? That’s the beauty of Gladiator 2: Citizens On Patrol. Every character is clearly the hero of their own story. They’re all incredibly believable as real people, which really helps the story because it means character motivations are easier to gauge, they don’t need to say out loud “No, this revelation has now made me sad and reconsider my feelings on the matter”.

Gladiator 2: The Second Story also looks GREAT, sometimes. There are no shots which you would print and hang on your wall, but the battles and fights all look REAL. When characters get shot by an arrow, it doesn’t feel like an action movie, it feels like reality. Even the deaths of unnamed characters are injected with the shock and fear that they would have in reality. The Naumachia is a masterpiece of combat cinema in terms of staging and tenseness. You get the feeling that the characters who survive don’t do so because they’re special or talented, but because they were lucky. The deaths are also VERY brutal, with stabbings galore. Oddly enough, the “smallest” blade death felt the most painful. Probably because it involved a needle going into someone’s ear and that instantly sets me off. Some people will criticise it for historical inaccuracy, but lets be honest, nobody is studying this as a piece of historical truth. There’s an unspoken understanding that this is entirely fictional, but possibly featuring real people. But that doesn’t mean it can’t teach us history. You can’t use it for facts and dates, but it does do a pretty good job of showing what life could be like on a day-to-day basis.The idea that someone could rise from slave to emperor was not only an ideal, it happened. So in some ways, it was more advanced and egalitarian than modern society. But in other ways, they still had slaves, so fuck ’em.

On the downside, some of the visuals look fake as shit. There’s one near the end which is particularly awful in terms of realness. The other downside is some of the characters feel like they only exist to die. There’s a character we meet in the opening scene who, from the second you see them, you know they’re going to be killed.

Whilst I’m talking about the opening; the opening credits take place over a series of watercolour painting recreations of the first movie. A stunningly beautiful way of doing it, and very unique.

It’s when it does stuff like this that Gladiator 2: Back 2 Da Hood is strongest. When it’s unique, showing its creative flourish. It’s when it does what every other film does that it’s at its weakest. When you feel you’ve seen this before. When it foreshadows a bit too obviously.

These are minor quips though. Still a damn fine movie and well worth checking out at the cinema. I mean, what else are you going to do, spend time in the wonderful grey and bleak weather of winter? Nope, go to a cinema, buy a hot chocolate, and stay warm watching what I’m sure will become a classic movie.