Liz O'Connor

The sequel curse strikes again. The ante has to be upped and II sets out to do it. There are moments of sheer art-directional brilliance (my personal favourite is the rhino). But on the whole it really is just a question of turning up the gore amp to 11. A very odd script roams around the Rome of G1 to G2 to oversplain what we all knew anyway. And enough with the sharks already! The acting was good in parts, but Denzel just dominated, even though he looked bored most of the time and almost seemed like he wished he was somewhere else, still he was the top prize in a bit of a lucky dip. The twin emperors were more Antus and Decus, than Ronnie and Reggie. I did enjoy it, but for me it is always the art direction, Ridley knows how to create sumptuous scenes. It strikes me that G1 was a truer depiction of Rome and gladiators, oddly it’s G1’s grounding in a big percentage of fact that makes it so much classier. I think that GII slowly slides towards a script that has more in common with something like Game of Thrones. It’s an imaginative mash-up of back-stabbing, throat-stabbing, anywhere stabbing, rodeo rhinos and a pinch of Jaws.