The long-awaited historical action epic is a good time. But every time a certain legend is on screen, it becomes a great time.
THERE ARE A lot of things that go into making a Gladiator movie good. Let’s think, first, about the original film—which was released back in 2000 and eventually won Best Picture at the Oscars. That movie was a massive success thanks to the combination of a number of things: a fascinating story of tragedy, action, triumph, and revenge, a legendary director with experience making both genre classics and crowd-pleasers, locked into a big movie that he knew precisely how to make, and an incredible ensemble cast led by a star who was not only committed to the physicality required by the movie’s lead role, but who showed up with a quiet, brutish charisma that came in droves (and who would eventually take home the Best Actor Oscar for his trouble).
Gladiator II on the other hand? Well, there’s a lot of stuff that’s good in Gladiator II; the action, the cast, the production design, the sheer blockbuster spectacle of it all. But the most important thing about Gladiator II is that it has Denzel Washington in it. And while Denzel Washington is always incredible—he’s won two Academy Awards and is considered one of the all-time greats for a reason—he is locked in to Gladiator II on a level we haven’t seen in a long time, giving the kind of performance and playing a kind of character that we’ve never seen before from him.
Washington plays Macrinus, a former slave-turned-power player in the once again dangerous Roman Empire. Gladiator II is set 16 years after the conclusion of the original film, and while that movie ended with Maximus (Russell Crowe) sharing before his death Marcus Aurelius’s (Richard Harris) wishes for Rome to become a republic, those hopes are long gone by the time the sequel starts up. Rome is once again a sadistic, violent place, under the power of a pair of psychotic co-emperor twins (played with an impressive layers of chaos by Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger). Macrinus isn’t the film’s POV character—that’s Paul Mescal’s Lucius—but he’s our clearest glimpse into the politics at play in this version of this world. He understands the game being played, and he’s all too willing to play it.
Paramount
From his first minute on screen, you can tell Denzel is bringing his A-game. His facial expressions, whether scouting Gladiator prospects or observing something unfolding in a Colosseum VIP box, say so much without saying anything at all. When he walks across the screen, draped in robes and shawls and with a goatee on his face, he looks the part, and since it’s Denzel and he can sell any line, you instantly buy his confidence—even as the things he says and do become increasingly sinister and self-serving. In other words? It’s a joy to watch this man play this character.
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That, really, is the value of employing a good old fashioned Movie Star. A Movie Star has charisma. A Movie Star pops off the screen, no matter how many lines, or how many scenes they have. Denzel Washington is the type of movie star who, through the rise of franchises and sequels as the main attractions at theaters, have largely gone extinct; when people are more interested in seeing something they already know about, there’s less inclination for studios to present Human Charisma Bombs, and there’s even less inclination for audiences to look for and follow them (but when they do appear, everyone knows it). Denzel is still at the top of his game—as Gladiator II so clearly proves—but it’s telling that two actors who he directly mentored (Austin Butler and Glen Powell) who have shown the most Old Fashioned Movie Star charisma in each of their respective 2024 appearances.
Paramount
The power of being a Movie Star is almost a perfect cocktail of ingredients. Obviously you have to have the look, and the energy, and the vibe, and the presence. But where Washington has always thrived (and particularly brings the house down in Gladiator II) is in his line readings. At one point in Macrinus’s rise to power, he meets with Senator Thraex (Tim McInnerny), who owes him a debt. The relationship between these two characters is like a batting practice pitcher throwing balls to Aaron Judge in a Home Run Derby. McInnerny plays Thraex as a quiet, sniveling, coward, allowing Denzel’s towering Macrinus to just completely steamroll him. “I own… your house,” Macrinus tells Thraex as a matter-of-fact solution to the whole debt situation. “I want… your loyalty,” he continues, chewing on the line like it’s the greatest meal he’s ever had.
Part of what makes Washington’s performance so great is the way Macrinus is written and structured within the film as such a great role overall. A former slave of the old emperor—who happens to be the grandfather of our protagonist—seeking revenge, simultaneously playing everyone from all sides against each other as a means for his own rise to power. The character in and of himself is an incredible subversion on the Proximo role that the late Oliver Reed played in the original film. Proximo was that film’s resident Gladiator trainer, a seemingly disinterested rich dude with a chip on his shoulder who eventually becomes a reluctant mentor and hero for our hero. “Are you in danger of becoming a good man?” Maximus memorably asks him after a particularly noble act. At no point does Macrinus face that question; in fact, the movie is set up so that you think initially he will be a loyal ally to Lucius. But the film wisely plays on that expectation, sending Macrinus in an entirely different direction and allowing Washington to absolutely eat as the movie makes the pivot.
Paramount
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Denzel has never played a straight-up villain character like this before; the closest would either be his previous collaboration with Ridley Scott, playing drug lord Frank Lucas in American Gangster, and when he played a rogue CIA man in the mostly-forgotten thriller Safe House. Both films let Denzel put his trademark charisma on display, and both characters are dangerous, violent men. But both times, they end up ultimately standing for good in the authorial eyes of the story. There’s no question in Gladiator II that Macrinus represents a force of evil. And, in a way, maybe that ultimately turns out to be a fault of the movie; after everything we’ve just seen this man do, it almost feels hard to root for his demise.
Gladiator II ultimately may not be quite as successful as the original film, if only because there’s ultimately less variable going on—it’s once again an action packed epic story of tragedy and triumph, of revenge and redemption. But the fork in the road comes with Washington’s character, a villain so off-the-leash entertaining that late in the movie he says the word “politics” in a way that lasts about four full seconds long. It’s hard to imagine anyone else on earth who would would even try that, letalone pull it off, outside of a Movie Star great who knows exactly what they’re doing.
And, yeah, that’s Denzel Washington for you.
