GladdIIator: a bit of a dud

 Okay, we are well into February 2025 and just watched Gladiator II (GladIIator) yesterday. Here's my take.

It was just aw'right. After viewing at home, my love Lee Ann and I agreed. It was just awright.

Good things first. Paul Mezcal and Pedro Pascal and of course Denzel Washington all did competent jobs. Did I come to care about any of their characters? Well, um... Well, no. Mezcal was okay, but somehow the story didn't rise to the task of building him into an epic hero. The writing seemed sparse and predictable. I don't have the script in hand but I'm sure someone more resourceful could cite quotes. There were some modern words and phrases that seemed completely out of place in the dialogue (e.g."line up") Also, that 22 pounds Mezcal reportedly gained for the role might better have been maybe 40, with some serious attention to the guns. His biceps looked like those of a former athlete just enough out of training to be (at least visually) disappointing. And amount a galloping horse, he looked like an angry husband chasing his cheating wife in a dirty wife-beater shirt.

Pascal's performance seemed a bit more substantial, but still came across to me as, like, a traveling salesman than a supreme general. His facial likeness to Burt Reynolds distracted me so that at times I felt I was watching a parody of Smoky and the Bandit instead of a majestic period piece. 

Denzel. Oh Denzel. Don't get me wrong, it's not the actor but the writing and direction. He carried the weight of a dedicated supervillain, but really? His little alternatingly gleeful and worried facial expressions in response to the bloody events below the Collosseum stands just seemed a little too forced, and he was FOREVER fidgeting with his costume. Maybe that was a choice, but I'd love to hear whether he or Ridley came up with that characteristic for Macrinus. It just made me go "pfff" by the third time it was demonstrated.

The real letdown, though, was Connie Nielson. 

https://nextbestpicture.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Gladiator-2.jpg

Not at any given frame of the film did I believe she was the daughter of a Roman Emperor, or the mother of a gladiator prince. coming off more like a soccer mom miscast in a local production of Hamlet, a supermarket Desdemona. Worse, I didn't believe she believed she was her charactor: Emotive scenes seemed over-mugged for, again, parody. I repeatedly had the experience of failing to believe she felt anything she was saying. True she had a LOT of expositive speeches. Maybe she just got tired of speaking them. I don't know, but I do know that it was her performance that, if I could pinpoint anything, let slip my engagement in the film. 

The Continuity editor, I'm sorry to say, failed most completely.

There were an abundance of continuity misdeeds that also engaged that little puffing sound. When Yuval Gonen as Arishat was run through and killed by an arrow, it landed perhaps 2 inches beneath her solar plexus. When Hanno/Lucius (improbably) fished her floating body to him from the surf, it was lodged firmly between her armored breasts. Then, oh, oh, then, our hero broke off the feather end of the arrow, clearly as a souvenir, prompting me to think, oh, no, please don't let this show up later. And (more pffing), it did--after his capture, imprisonment, after time and time again being dressed up as a slave gladiator, and everything he must have gone through in the course of all that, there it is, lying on a pillow as he arms and dresses hisself (sic) to go into battle as the savior of Rome in his daddy's enshrined battle gear. The feathers were immaculate. There were also misplaced arms and legs when scenes cut to scenes, a lot of those kinds of little glitches. 

As my honey stated after the credits began to run, "There's a reason it only got a nomination for best costumes." And I'd say that if it wins that one, it's only because of Denzel's pffffffery with his robes.

It was just awright. Epic film? Not. Did it maybe just suffer our viewing it upon the small(er) screen? Could be argued, but I'd argue the failures previously mentioned likely stand out even more in the theater. Take a pass.