“Gladiator 2”, it’s an epic that makes people laugh – Libération

Twenty-four years after the first opus, Ridley Scott gives a sequel to his epic, always more addicted to one-upmanship. On the program, baptism of muscles for Paul Mescal and Denzel Washington above the fray.

Gladiator ? Five Oscars in 2001, Ridley Scott's breakthrough in the arena of blockbusters of the new millennium, resurrecting the peplum with neo-digital toys (following him, Troy, Alexander, 300…will all enter the breach). The semi-unknown Russell Crowe revealed himself as a mountain of muscles, roaring under the cheers of a bloodthirsty crowd at the same time as he skewered human meat: “Have you not had enough fun? !” Getting drunk on the marathon of violence while mimicking his criticism was the ultimate fraud of this megasuccess: obviously, no one claims to discover in Scott, a theater driver before the eternal, a fine moralist on the society of the spectacle. Twenty-four years later, the program remains the same, boosted to some 310 million dollars in budget, and knows very well how to take us for slight idiots by fulfilling its function.

It's the turn of Irishman Paul Mescal, sweet cutie from indie (Normal People, After sun) to know his coronation as a Hollywood beast. War general in a dark “city of Africa” at the beginning of the film, having fallen into the hands of the Roman army, the fellow does not deviate from tradition,