Brief Story Line
Sixteen years after the events of the first movie, Rome was now ruled by the twins Emperor Geta (Joseph Quinn - A Quiet Place: Day One, Stranger Things Season 4 etc) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger - The Woman in the Window, Fear Street Part Three: 1666 and its predecessors etc) who desired to conquer the world through their Roman army led by General Acacius (Pedro Pascal - The Wild Robot, The Mandalorian TV series etc). After their latest conquest in Numidia, Acacius returned home to meet his wife, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen - Role Play, One Hour Photo etc). To celebrate his victory, the Emperors decided to celebrate with various fights in the Colosseum.
Hanno (Paul Mescal - All of Us Strangers, Normal People TV series etc), one of the warrior in Numidia was brought to Rome as slave and impressed the stablemaster Macrinus (Denzel Washington - The Equalizer 3, The Magnificent Seven 2016 version etc) so much that he promised him to be free by winning Gladiator games. Filled with rage, Hanno did his best to win the fights with his ultimate goal to fight against Acacius. But the power struggle and his mysterious past would soon caught up with Hanno and change his fate completely,
So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
My wife and I were quite shocked when we realized that it has been twenty four years since the first movie was released. To be honest, I did not really remember the plot from the original, but all I could remember was the epic fights in the Colosseum and the feeling of in awe looking at the wonderful setting & special effects. Anyway, I never watched the trailer to this sequel and both of us did not even read the synopsis, so we did not know what the story was all about. It's a good thing that the story was pretty easy to understand.
It did not take long before we were shown a big war scene that was quite savage and wonderfully done. And to my delight, subsequently the story moved quite fast with plenty of action shown here and there, making it enjoyable to see. Even the power struggle was intelligently shown through simple dialogues and not hard to grasp. With awesome story telling, both of us were pretty absorbed with the movie that we were surprised when we reached half the duration without feeling too long. However, when we were approaching the final third and the build up which seemed to lead to major climax, it was very disappointing that it ended the way it did. My wife and I felt it to be anticlimactic and a let down and made us less appreciative of the movie.
The cast in here were mostly impressive. My wife admired the commanding voice of Paul Mescal and we both really liked the performance of Denzel Washington who was perfect in his role here. We were really convinced he was such a character even from the start with his facial expressions, behavior and we somehow always knew he would be such a cunning, manipulative person behind his seemingly mischievous appearance. Aside from Connie Nielsen, there was only 1 more person who reprised his role, i.e Sir Derek Jacobi (Murder on the Orient Express, The Crown TV series etc) as Senato Gracchus. There were several other support cast here such as Lior Raz (Fauda TV series etc) as Viggo, the Gladiators trainer working for Macrinus, Alexander Karim (The Swarm TV series etc) as the Gladiators' doctor Ravi, Tim McInnerny (Blackadder Sitcom series etc) as Senator Thraex and few others in minor roles.
The action was definitely the highlight in here for us, with the Gladiator fights shown very convincingly although we were surprised there were at least two times the scenes were cut by Indonesian Censorship bodies (it's classified for 17+ for God's sake). With the support of amazing Dolby Atmos sound effect, the action felt even grander as the sound of swords piercing, the voice of the wild animals and the fire burning surrounding us all. The story telling was also another plus point as I said above, we felt it moved at the perfect pace. The director Ridley Scott (who also directed the original movie and many other critically and commercial hits in the past like Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise etc) must be applauded for this part, although we were still unhappy with the way it ended. Btw, there was no mid or post end credit scene here.
From what I read, there is a possibility of another sequel in future, depending on the box office performance of this movie. After all, they need to justify it as the production budget was huge (between USD 250-310 million). Let us see in the next few weeks how it would fare then. Critics seemed to be appreciative with the film, though some thought the original was superior in term of story and emotions. For me and my wife, though we were pleased with the movie, but the censors and the anticlimactic ending was a bit of let down. If only the ending was done differently, we would have branded it as one of the most satisfying epic action adventure movie. Nevertheless, we were still entertained by the film in general.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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