The peak of actor Russel Crowes’ career was in 2000 and 2001 when he starred in the first “Gladiator” movie and won the Best Actor Oscar and was then nominated the following year (and should have won) for playing the brilliant Nobel Prize-winning professor John Nash in “A Beautiful Mind,” directed by Ron Howard. Unfortunately for Crowe, after some bad breaks and the ongoing harsh realities of the movie industry, getting a top movie role, finding a good enough screenplay, and trying to survive the fickleness of the American public, Russel Crowe has never reached the heights of 2000 and 2001 again.

The sequel to Gladiator, “Gladiator II,” is another story that spends much time creating excuses for major fight scenes and violent death inside the Roman Colosseum, and not much time for character development and interesting dialogue. For me with both films, the historical content of showing thousands of human beings sitting in a huge stadium while smiling and laughing at the agony and horrific death of slaves and soldiers is one of history’s greatest examples of “man’s inhumanity to man”. This sequel does have scenes of Crowe as Maxiumus from the original movie, with a timeline some 20 years later with Maxiumus’s son, Lucius played very well by actor Paul Mescal and Maxiumus’s wife Lucilla played once again by Connie Nielsen.

In this sequel, there are no Tigers that rush into the Colosseum to kill people, instead, the director
Ridley Scott, who directed the first Gladiator, has vicious monkeys, a huge charging rhinoceros ridden by a Roman Soldier, and even an ocean-water-filled Colosseum floor with man-eating sharks who attack and kill men who fall off the boats while fighting with swords and bow and arrows. This part of the story, with Sharks, Monkeys, and a huge Rhinocerous has more to do with Hollywood embellishment than being true to Roman history.

Denzel Washington plays Macrinus, the central antagonist in this story who is constantly scheming to take over as emperor of Rome does provide some of the best acting in this film, a main reason to see this sequel despite the obvious drop in quality from the first movie. As with the last film, the fighting is extremely violent, brutal and definitely not for children younger than 15.

The critics are not very high on this movie, giving an anemic 72% rating, and this time around I agree with the critics as this movie is too much about nonstop fighting scenes, with not much else. Due to the impressive special effects, I give Gladiator II a small recommendation.