Gladiador II

Sir Ridley is 87 years old, and we only mention this because there's a vibrancy and verve to so much of this sequel that you'd swear the unbelievably prolific filmmaker has a personal fountain of youth in his Malibu mansion's backyard.

Scott and his collaborators pander so unabashedly to our bloodlust that it rings all the more hollow when Gladiator II suddenly fancies itself a civics lesson.

History might keep repeating itself, but there's no reason for cinematic retreads to be this tiresome too.

A movie bursting with just enough spectacle to keep it from being boring but, when you try to get anything out of it thematically, slips through your fingers like the sand in a warrior's hands.

Even if Gladiator II is essentially an unapologetic retread of its predecessor, all of these actors are fun to watch -- though none stands taller, literally or figuratively, than Denzel Washington.

Lucius's glorious, bloody, twisty, escapist Roman road to victory holds audiences captive from beginning to end.

Without a star who can summon a little more of that Crowian command, it's a fool's errand. Sad to say, no one is unleashing hell at Mescal's signal.

It's so grandiose, the audience at my screening started applauding before a single fight had begun.

If you're going to see Gladiator II, go see it in the biggest screen possible.

If you're paying attention, despite the copious gore, Denzel Washington having the time of his life as a scenery-chewing villain, and of course the sharks, you'll leave the movie with a far deeper grasp of Rome as it actually was.

The scale of the distractions correlates to the scale of dissoluteness and corruption. It's almost as if history repeats itself.

That insistence in creating parallels between the two "Gladiator" films-and between Lucius and Maximus-occasionally yields poetic results, though in general the outcome is contrived.

It can't fill "Gladiator's" sandals.

It's Washington who ultimately makes "Gladiator II" stand apart from the first film and makes it a lot more fun than it has any right to be.

There's an interesting throughline between the two films that, while they both have different identities that favor a progression in time, make sense together in a franchise.

Paul Mescal just seems overwhelmed. At a lot of points, this film winds up feeling like an echo of the first film.

This movie belongs to Denzel Washington. It was campier than the first one, and consequently I liked it better.

In a cast of veteran actors and extremely talented up-and-comers, Washington steals the movie. He takes the throne.

Fast, brutal and absorbing, the shocker opener sets the template for the rest of the movie, which plays - and often feels - like one long, inventively diverse, elaborately imaginative fight.

For all its faults, Gladiator II is an extraordinary film, the kind that demands to be seen in theaters.