‘Gladiator II’ Review: Denzel Washington and Paul Mescal Entertain

When Denzel Washington sweeps into “Gladiator II” — Ridley Scott’s epic about ancient Rome and men at war and sometimes in love — it’s with such easy grace that you may mistake his character’s loose bearing with indifference. What you’re seeing is power incarnate, power that’s so raw and so supremely self-possessed that it doesn’t announce itself. It just takes. And it keeps taking as warriors enter the Colosseum to fight and die in the blood sport that gives this sequel to Scott’s 2000 drama “Gladiator” its sober backdrop and much of its juice. It is a performance of charismatic evil and of mesmerizing stardom both.

Like Scott’s filmmaking in this pleasurably immersive spectacle — with its foreign ancients and mentalities, exotic animals and equally unfamiliar calls to human nobility — Washington’s performance has skill, intensity and absolute confidence. Each man has an unqualified belief in entertainment as a value that’s essential to put over an old-fashioned, inherently audacious production like this, the kind that turns the past into a plaything and doesn’t ask you to worry about niceties like historical accuracy. Both director and performer are also veterans when it comes to popular audiences, and since neither has mellowed or slowed with age (Scott turns 87 this year and Washington 70), they still know how to put on a great show.

The first “Gladiator” centers on a Roman general, Maximus (Russell Crowe), who circa 180 A.D. serves an aged emperor, incurs the wrath of a young usurper and ends up clanging swords in the Colosseum, where he quickly becomes a crowd favorite. Crowe, then at the height of his leading-man fame, delivered an appropriately muscular if characteristically sensitive lead performance that holds the screen even when challenged by the vulpine charisma of a scene-stealing Joaquin Phoenix as the new emperor. The two characters are dead by the end and Rome itself seems like it may follow rapidly in their wake; they and all the other ghosts from the original movie haunt the sequel, which is set 16 years later.

“Gladiator II” tells the story of another righteous, ostensibly simple man, this time named Lucius (Paul Mescal) who is swept up by violent political forces seemingly beyond his control. The story opens in Numidia, a slice of land hugging the northernmost coast of the African continent. There, in a humming city, Lucius lives with his wife, and while their smiles suggest they’re happy enough, they are both soon suiting up to fight a flotilla of Roman invaders. Led by General Acacius (Pedro Pascal), the Romans make quick work of the Numidians. In this regard, the invaders are just as ruthlessly economic as Scott, who demonstrates a commensurate show of his power with the epically scaled, vividly staged and shot warfare.

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. As in the first film, the diversity of the casting here suggests the vastness of the Roman Empire, a variety that’s matched by the many ways characters die: trebuchet, arrow, sword and a (digital) menagerie that includes a saddled rhino and a troop of rampaging baboons. Every so often, the characters put down their weapons to indulge their other vices or to plot an uprising, diverting interludes that advance the narrative and add crucial rhythm, giving the characters enough time to unclench the jaws and for you to keep processing the story.