Gladiator II: What the critics say about Paul Mescal's performance

Followers of social media could be forgiven for believing notices of Gladiator II, Ridley Scott’s sequel to his own 2000 Roman smash, had been out for weeks. Early screenings, embargoed for full reviews, but not for X and its competitors, generated the sort of heated praise that such teasers always achieve. “Welcome back to the f*king [sic] movies!,” Clayton Davis, awards editor at Variety, bellowed on X three weeks ago. “That sums up #GladiatorII. Ridley Scott’s best directorial effort since Black Hawk Down.”

Paramount Pictures will, on balance, be happy with the more measured praise that emerged when the formal embargo ended on Monday afternoon. Scoring, at time of writing, 67/100 on the review aggregator site Metacritic, the film won over more writers than it disappointed. Owen Gleiberman, Davis’s colleague at Variety, acknowledged “a solid piece of neoclassical popcorn – a serviceable epic of brutal warfare”. He continued: “It’s a Saturday-night epic of tony escapism. But is it great? A movie to love the way that some of us love Gladiator? No and no.”

The word on Paul Mescal, who plays a descendant of Russell Crowe’s character from the first film, was consistently positive. Denzel Washington, suavely sinister as a wealthy Gladiator wrangler, also received much acclaim. “At 28, Paul Mescal is younger than Crowe’s 36 when he took the lead in G1,” Peter Bradshaw at the Guardian wrote in a four-star notice. “But he is massively bulked up with a new sonorous Britspeak growl: charismatic and likable in the ways Mescal always is.” Bradshaw felt Scott was “galloping back over old ground, galloping in a circle perhaps,” but noted there was “something awe-inspiring in seeing Paul Mescal’s triumphal march into the A-list”.

Robbie Collin at the Daily Telegraph had good news for fans of the Kildare man’s muscles. “Mescal is always watchable, with a stocky, swarthy, brooding presence that calls to mind a young Richard Harris or Oliver Reed,” he wrote. “And his bod surpasses Crowe’s: the shoulders alone are like freshly baked sourdough loaves.” Collin felt, however, nobody could compete with the veteran. “Washington’s relaxed command of this juicy role translates into pure pleasure for the audience,” he raved. “Every gesture radiates movie-star ease; every line comes with an unexpected flourish. Unfortunately he’s so good he rather eclipses the rest of the cast.”

David Rooney at the Hollywood Reporter, Variety’s chief rival among the trade papers, was divided on the film. “The sequel delivers what fans of its Oscar-winning 2000 predecessor will crave – battles, swordplay, bloodshed, Ancient Roman intrigue,” he mused. “That said, there’s a deja vu quality to much of the new film, a slavishness that goes beyond the caged men forced to fight for their survival, and seeps into the very bones of a drama overly beholden to the original.” Rooney, a respected Australian critic of Irish descent, bravely suggested that “Mescal’s performance feels a tad flat at times”.

[ ‘This feels categorically mental’: Paul Mescal stunned by celebrations at Gladiator II premiereOpens in new window ]

Kevin Maher, film critic for the Times, felt an Atlantic divide was developing. “Get ready for the UK v US review split on Gladiator 2,” he wrote on X. There may be something in that. Vikram Murthi, writing for the respected US film site IndieWire, was certainly less impressed than the Guardian or the Telegraph. “Performances inevitably struggle to make much of an impact when they’re manoeuvring within an overly busy plot,” he wrote. “These storylines all vary in interest, and though they eventually dovetail, they never feel part of a coherent whole, rendering Gladiator II frequently disjointed.”

“The thrill of the action sequences just underscores the hollowness of the rest of the enterprise,” Alison Willmore at New York Magazine wrote. “Sure, not all of us spend a lot of time thinking about the Roman Empire, but those who do deserve better than this.”

Maher himself went in heavy at the Times. “The finished film, it transpires, is Scott’s most disappointing ‘legacy sequel’ (aka belated follow-up) since Prometheus,” he thundered for the Thunderer. “It’s a scattershot effort with half-formed characters (with one exception) and undernourished plot lines that seem to exist only in conversation with the Russell Crowe original.”

On this side of the Irish Sea, Chris Wasser, for the Irish Independent, was of two minds in this three-star review. “It is, perhaps, foolish to expect too much from Gladiator II,” he wrote. “Scott’s sequel is neither a masterpiece nor a disaster. It is instead a big, old-fashioned sword-and-sandal extravaganza, the kind of film where heroes make loud, impassioned speeches to an audience of thousands.”

This author, though again impressed by Mescal, leant more unequivocally towards the negative. The Irish Times ventured: “There is, however, never any convincing argument for the film to exist beyond the demand that something so lucrative should eventually generate something else equivalently lucrative (we’ll see).”

[ There’s a reason why we’ve become blasé about Paul Mescal’s lead role in Gladiator IIOpens in new window ]

We will indeed see. The studio will feel that, with this week’s largely positive notices, a hurdle has been jumped for a troubled production that cost north of $250 million. It has no serious box-office challengers in the UK and Ireland for the first seven days, but in the US, where it is released a week later, it opens directly opposite lavish musical Wicked. That could be as bloody a fight as anything on screen.

Oscar nominations still look possible. Washington is a cert for a spot in the best supporting actor race. Mescal is maybe 50/50 for a best actor nod. The film itself, in a weakish year when you get past possible winners such as Anora, The Brutalist and Conclave, could certainly slip on to the best picture starting grid.