GLADIATOR II****

GLADIATOR II is glorious trash. I can't see it winning any Oscars, but the two hour plus running time flies by.  There's a ridiculous gladiatorial battle featuring a rhino an hour after it starts, and an even more ridiculous one featuring sharks an hour before it finishes.  There's a serviceable plot, lots of fan service from the original, and a juicy performance from Denzel Washington.  I don't think it will do for Paul Mescal what it did for Russell Crowe. He has precious little to say.  But I was, indeed, entertained.

The movie opens with an epic naval assault on a north African town led by Pedro Pascal's war weary Roman general Acacius.  It results in Paul Mescal's warrior Hanno being taken prisoner and his wife being killed. (Note in this version of Rome, women can be warriors too - but they still can't have meaningful impact on the plot.) Back in Rome, Hanno manages to impress Denzel Washington's political mover and shaker and Gladiatorial sponsor Macrinus. Hanno does this by fighting of a ludicrously CGI'd warrior monkey - the only duff note in the whole film. For me, the joy of these films is that they scrupulously bring dusty, vital, chaotic Rome to life.  I hate anything that brings me out of that.

And so the plot moves into gear.  Hanno wants revenge on Acacius, little realising that Acacius is as disenchanted with the corruption of Rome as he is.  Acacius has a loyal legion based in Ostia ready to launch a coup and install his wife, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) as Marcus Aurelius' literal and philosophical heir.   

The corruption of Rome is represented by the young, feckless twin Emperors Geta and Caracalla (Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger) and a largely supine Senate represented by the bankrupt Senator Thrax (Tim McInnerny).

Somewhere between the two factions lies Macrinus, a power broker who bankrupts Thrax and gains the ear of the Emperors.  Is he on the side of Aurelius or opposed? Will he help Hanno or betray him?  

The resulting film is full of amazing visual spectacle and kinetic fight scenes. I loved John Mathieson's cinematography and the CGI rendering of ancient Rome is I found it curiously chaste for an R-rated movie though. We barely see Acacius and Lucilla kiss. Macrinus hints as his bisexuality but apparently a male-on-male kissing scene was edited out.  The twin emperors wear heavy make-up and one is meant to be gay, but it's all rather milquetoast. Still, I suppose sex scenes aren't the point in a sword-and-sandal epic. 

GLADIATOR has a running time of 148 minutes and is rated R. It is on release in the UK and opens on November 22nd in the USA.

Spoilers follow:  it's hard not to watch this film in light of the US election and to see clear parallels with the corruption of Rome and the newly installed kakocracy in America.  One could argue that Caracalla's appointment of Dondas is equivalent to Trump's nomination of Gaetz. And that the pure power philosophy of Macrinus, so Nietzschean, is that of Trump. And there's something tragic and true in Macrinus calling bullshit on the Dream of Rome.  Aurelius may have wanted to restore power to the Senate and People of Rome, but he wasn't about to end slavery.  Macrinus' nihilism actually makes more sense than all the Hollywood schmalz, especially if you know anything about Roman history.

JUSTICE LEAGUE

After a dismally dull experience of BATMAN VS SUPERMAN and walking out of SUICIDE SQUAD after 30 minutes, it was only my recent enjoyment of WONDER WOMAN that made me vaguely interested in seeing the new DC multi-character action film, JUSTICE LEAGUE. I'm pleased to report that, given incredibly low expectations, I actually had a good time watching the film, thanks to the fact that Superman remains dead for much of it, and the charisma vacuum that is Henry Cavill, and sheer flabby uninterested of Ben Affleck are diluted by both Wonder Woman's earnest awesomeness and a trio of great new additions to the franchise. I was genuinely amused by Ezra Miller's nerdy, funny Flash, and suspect that his character benefited most from Joss Whedon taking over the reins as director once the portentous heavy-handed Zack Snyder left for personal reasons. That Miller went from playing a genuinely unnerving psycho in WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN to a disarmingly hapless teen here shows great range.  I also really liked the teasing of a more earnest backstory involving his incarcerated father played by Billy Crudup - who manages to communicate pained selflessness in a few brief scenes. Perhaps most surprisingly, I loved Jason Mamoa's rock-star ragged Aquaman. This was a great shock after he failed to impress in the CONAN remake and GAME OF THRONES - but that suggests scripts and directors that cast him for his body and not his evident charisma and ability to turn a genuinely comic line.  His AQUAMAN is an ancient hero, pissed off with the world, performing small acts of kindness while blind drunk. Insofar as he has an arc, it's realising that he has to take responsibility for saving the world and be a true heir of Atlantis. Similarly, in this film, Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman also has to assume the mantel of leadership and become an icon of  hope, just as Superman had been.  The final new addition is newcomer Ray Fisher's Cyborg, Victor Stone.  He has the most serious role to play, as he struggles to come to terms with his powers and the role his father played in mutilating him.  In the context of a rather silly film, it's his character that is the most moving.  Against this cast of genuinely funny and moving characters, it was easy to quickly move past Ben Affleck's continuing banality as Bruce Wayne and Henry Cavill's po-faced, charisma-less Superman.

WONDER WOMAN

Beating an admittedly low bar, WONDER WOMAN is unquestionably the best movie in the DC franchise. It has some of the darkness of BATMAN VS SUPERMAN but never feels pretentious or portentous; and in the place of SUICIDE SQUADS' maddeningly shifting tone and offensive objectification of Harley Quinn we have a movie with a straightforward compelling story and a courageous and often subtle take on modern sexual and racial politics.  The result is a film that's both highly enjoyable and yet deeply meaningful  - a long overdue strong heroine in a universe full of macho posturers. 

The movie opens in contemporary France with Batman reaching out to Diana/Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), but it's essentially a long flashback and origins story, told in live action and with beautifully designed animation and the most seamless use of CGI.  We see the young child growing up on an island of Amazonian woman - fierce warriors created by Zeus to protect humanity from the corrupting influence of his son Aries, the god of war.  Diana herself is moulded from clay by her mother Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen - GLADIATOR), and made live by Zeus himself. Accordingly, she is herself a god, sister to Aries, although this fact seems to escape her logical notice.  The Amazons have been holed up on a magical island while World War One is raging around them, until US spy Steve Trevor (Chris Pine - STAR TREK reboot) crash lands in their midst.  A brave Diana then returns with him to wartime Europe, supposedly to bring an end to war by killing Aries, whom she believes is German General Ludendorff (Danny Huston.)