Paul K

Some ratings for visually stunning scenes and depictions of ancient battles but otherwise the focus of the film is spoilt by ultra unrealism. Computerised baboons suffering from alopecia moulting to a colosseum shark filled pool, heightened it's ridiculousness. Some character actors didn't belong or suit this film. The emperors looked like they came out of a psychiatric ward, the colosseum orchestrator and speaker is out of trolleys Britain. Worst of all Denzel Washington's accent seems to alter from the beginning of the film. His usual mannerism fall back too easily on past American street scene roles and in the last minutes of the film he becomes the ultimate subjugator eliminating all the powerful heads single-handedly like an American Gangster lacking strategy or liaisons. My final annoyance of this film comes with the continual recycled scenes and attempted connections to the original Gladiator film. Gladiator II to me lacks any kind of historical accuracy. The film would have been better as a fantasy with a completely different title and not trying to follow on from the original or be centric to the Roman Empire's capital just made it a really disjointed viewing.