Time to go back, way back. The year is 2000 and Ridley Scott’s Gladiator is storming cinemas. With Russell Crowe as its hero and Joaquin Phoenix as a bad dude, the historical epic—a vengeance story featuring some brilliant sets—swept the box office, awards shows, and school classrooms for end-of-term viewing forevermore (I believe I have seen the first 35 minutes of Gladiator about seven times). Was it inevitable that we would get a sequel? To a film which earned over USD400 million and won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Actor? Perhaps the only surprise is that it has taken 24 years for Gladiator II to enter the arena: this sequel was not built in a day.
Maybe Ridley was waiting for the right lead. He seems to have found one in Normal People’s Paul Mescal, a very fine actor who carries social media trends and fashion movements on his well-turned shoulders, to take up Crowe’s mantle. Mescal plays Lucius, who has been living in northern Africa with his wife when the big bad Roman army come knocking. After the city of Numidia is conquered, a widowed Lucius is ferried to Rome where he is put in a ring with some (remarkably terrible CGI) baboons. Impressed by Lucius’ willingness to bite monkeys, human trafficker-cum-politico Macrinus (Denzel Washington) coaches Lucius into the Colosseum where he is forced to fight sharks, rhinos and personal demons. Around him, Rome burns: twin emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) are running roughshod over the senate, leading Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) to plan an insurrection with her husband General Acacius (Pedro Pascal).
No surprises with how any of this unfolds (even fewer surprises if you have seen the first movie), and the straightforwardness of the plot makes it clear that audiences should simply behold the spectacle. In the most talked-about staging at the Colosseum, the arena is flooded in a recreation of the Battle of Salamis—a sea battle between the Greeks and the Persian navy for those not paying attention during classical civilisation—and Lucius must fight against against some (remarkably terrible CGI) sharks. In another, Lucius fights a Roman atop a rhino. None of this is any match to Lucius, who does not seem afraid of these challenges at any point, even for a single second. Macrinus attributes that success to Lucius’ “rage”, though the star gladiator is also cunning and smart, which adds to his appeal.
With his aquiline features, Mescal certainly looks the part—which becomes a welcome visual gag involving a statue that shares his likeness—and has the jacked arms and legs and shoulders to boot (a result we can attribute to Mescal’s training regime and four prescribed ready-made meals a day). Mescal’s Lucius has the vibe of a man who has never willingly made a joke in his entire life, which is fine, but a sense of humour—this is a ridiculous movie—would not have gone amiss. If he struggles to sustain a leading man performance – well, it’s a two hour plus movie, and the script is uninspiring.
Hechinger and Quinn have the juiciest roles here as the demented brothers whose grip on an empire is crumbling at an alarming rate (what the plot lacks in originality, the pacing makes up for in lunacy). Geta is the more strategic brother, while Caracalla is suffering from a sexually transmitted disease which has now begun to affect his brain as well. Washington just about takes the entire film as Macrinus, who ascends to the most powerful men in Rome in a matter of days. It’s a giddy, ridiculous rise, and Washington’s performance matches that. (The same cannot be said for all the supporting cast, who occasionally read lines as though their scripts were typed out in Latin.)
And Scott sure knows how to deliver what an audience wants. His direction is frenetic, and the film works well as a Roman soap opera. There are moments of real tension in this corrupt Rome, like when Acasius is welcomed by the emperors on his victory lap through the city streets. As the general moves from the hollering crowds to the hush of the emperors’ enclave, from public mania to private menace, there are emotional stakes that are largely absent from the arena. Scott pairs that with a fun, gossipy undertone throughout; servants hide in bushes, whispers spread through crowds. Even the sillier aspects—an anachronistic newspaper, a pet monkey in a frilly outfit—are enjoyable swings, which seem to say: not everything has to be taken too seriously.
It’s a shame that, among all that campy drama, the emotional impact is minimal: the story is simply so obvious, Lucius’ virtues so pure, and his journey to success so unchallenged that the ending arrives with a shrug, rather than an imperial thumbs up.
Originally published on Esquire UK
Genuinely, I'm sorry to do this, but you really need some context before we dive into my experience watching Napoleon. In freshman year history class, Mr. C demanded that I memorise the capital city of each and every state in this damned country. For reasons that amounted to "fuck this weird-baseball-coach-slash-history-teacher" and "fuck Little Rock and Topeka and Bismark and Montpelier," I made a clear-eyed decision to cheat my way through the next four years of high school history. When we hit Napoleon and the French Revolution, I think, I was copying tests from Frank and Gage. (If you're reading this, Frage... thank you.)
It's a long way around to telling you that, last week, I saw—or, bore witness to—director Ridley Scott's Napoleon. There I was, a 30-year-old man with popcorn butter stains on his sweatpants at the Times Square Regal E-Walk, wondering if there's any historical basis for Napoleon oinking at Joséphine when he wants to get nasty. Could this be history? I mused.
Reader, Napoleon is really fucking weird. It's easy to understand why critics seem so confused. A film that was advertised as the "Dad Movie of the Century" sways between tones like a boozy night on the Atlantic! To give you an idea of the experience, Napoleon is two hours and 38 minutes long. First act: We're introduced to the Napoleon your girlfriend tells you not to worry about. When his horse gets a cannonball to the chest, he asks someone to dig out the cannonball so he can keep it as a memento. Second act: Napoleon done in the style of a Bowen Yang-led Saturday Night Live! skit where the quippy, wounded emperor oinks when he's horny. Third act: Waterloo.
At different points in the film, my fellow audience members were either cackling or hush-quiet. They giggled at Bonaparte's takedown of the Austrian emperor or in awe of Scott's signature historical set-pieces. After seeing the long, yet hyper-focused Killers of the Flower Moon and The Holdovers's uncomplicated mushiness, Napoleon baffled me. I can't stop thinking about it, in a men-are-always-thinking-about-the-Roman-Empire kind of way. Of all the films I've seen this year, it was the one I couldn't stop myself from recapping around Esquire's offices to anyone who would listen.
The next day, I paid a visit to our managing editor—and noted reader of historical biographies—John Kenney, and brought up a number of questions I have for Napoleon, all of which haunted my eighth-grade-level history chops:
John, bless his soul, politely watched me blabber on. He didn't offer much background either way, because either I wasn't making sense, or Napoleon didn't make sense. (If we're being honest, probably both.)
It's possible—maybe even likely—that Scott intended Napoleon as one big roast of one very little man. This man, who (as we are reminded at the end of the film) ignited wars that caused millions of casualties. So he leaned into the creepo Napoleon (Creepoleon? That something?), who was most vulnerable when he was with Joséphine. Especially the letters: "I write you, me beloved one, very often, and you write very little. You are wicked and naughty, very naughty, as much as you are fickle."
Maybe Scott thought that going full Band of Brothers on the Napoleonic Wars would reach hero-worship territory. But that doesn' explain why the last hour or so, Napoleon is exactly that. Replete with an epic Ridley Scott battle, with plenty of guns, formations, stabbing, and death. Or, perhaps Napoleon's unevenness must thank Phoenix's take on the Frenchman, which has a little bit too much Joker and Beau in the alchemy. (Another hilarious, if dubious delivery from Phoenix, delivered at top-of-lungs decibels: "YOU THINK YOU'RE SO GREAT BECAUSE YOU HAVE BOATS!")
If you're looking for a neat, tidy takeaway for this one, I don't have it. All I know is that in between bites of turkey during this Thanksgiving, I'll wonder if Bonaparte actually needed a stepladder to properly view a mummy, and secretly wish that the turkey was a lamb chop. Ask me again next year, folks.
