3.5/5 stars

A widow in her sixties with a pair of estranged daughters is confronted with a difficult decision following a family tragedy in Huang Xi’s thoughtful drama Daughter’s Daughter.

Winner of the 2024 Golden Horse Awards prize for best screenplay at a ceremony in Taiwan in November, the film explores the strained relationships between parents and their children in a society that is losing sight of traditional filial duties.

The couple were trying for a baby via IVF treatment and a viable embryo survives them, with Jin now the legal guardian. While wrestling with the grief of losing her child, Jin is burdened with the impossible task of deciding the fate of her as-yet unborn grandchild.

I’ve seen good films and I’ve seen bad films. This is, indeed, not a good film by any stretch of the imagination. 

Evidently, a new drug that is adjacent to vampire blood is being bought and sold on the black market for profit and pleasure, which already sounds like something from a Bram Stoker rip-off novel. Sean is a young drug dealer who gets his cousin Eric “into some deep shit,” as the characters would put it. Sean’s dad destroys the drugs in a fit of rage and owes money to the people who loaned it to him. 

Let’s just get this out of the way. This movie is bad and for all the reasons that you might think. For starters, the dialogue is horrendous and sounds like something from a Grand Theft Auto game, where every other word is profanity. It seems like the writer was writing the script for a film project while in college and forgot to add character development (or characters that we cared about). 

Moreover, the plot has already been played so many times. How many times do we have to see a virus ravage the people of a town (or the entire world) and watch it slowly destroy the people in the film little by little? I’m no stranger to a virus movie and I’m certainly on board with a good one. I’ve even made a few virus-related films. It would have been nice to see the filmmakers do something différent with the material.

Finally, the acting is laughably terrible. There is way too much overacting, with screaming and shouting in every other scene. It’s like watching an episode of a Vikings series, with all of the characters are yelling at each other. 

All in all, this movie was something that had no purpose and was bereft of character development, which makes me wonder how the film managed to get made. 

“Gladiator II” has some awfully big sandals to fill, both commercially and creatively. Its predecessor, 2000’s “Gladiator,” made $187 million at the domestic box office. The new film has thus far made an estimated $132 million after three weekends of release. With a lot of money up for grabs in the upcoming holiday season, another $55 million isn’t out of the question. Maybe I could even stretch to see it making the $68 million it needs to hit the $200 million mark. Yes, inflation means that it’s less impressive to make these numbers now than it did nearly a quarter-century ago, but these are attainable goals.

What I do not see as attainable is the sequel ever becoming as well-regarded as the original. That film won the Academy Award for Best Picture, so already the new one has to live up to an impossibly high (dare I say “gold”?) standard. But even with realistic standards, this movie is still a disappointment.

The second film takes place a few decades after the first, with the once-great Roman Empire ready to collapse under the blissfully-ignorant rule of twin emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger). They’re still greedy enough to want to expand the empire, so they send out top general Acacius (Pedro Pascal) to conquer a kingdom in Africa. Acacius doesn’t believe in the imperialist cause, but he’s sworn allegiance to his home, so he sacks the kingdom, which includes killing the wife of top soldier Hanno (Paul Mescal), who swears revenge.

Hanno is taken prisoner and sold into slavery, where he’s served up as a potential gladiator without much consideration. But he impresses in his tryout against a troop of baboons, and is purchased by Macrinus (Denzel Washington), a former slave who sees managing gladiators as a way to curry favor with the emperors, feeding into political ambitions and possibly even a power grab. He makes a deal with Hanno that if his “personal instrument of destruction” can become a superstar in the Colosseum, he’ll eventually give him a chance at revenge against Acacius.

Hanno is conflicted between wanting revenge and not wanting to be used as a political pawn for a slimeball like Macrinus. He’s not conflicted about wanting to stay alive, however, so he plays along in putting together a string of victories. Also, Acacius’s wife Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), the daughter of former emperor Aurelius, notices that Hanno bears a striking resemblance to her long-lost son Luscious. And Luscious’s father… is not Acacius.

The story and action aren’t very engaging in “Gladiator II,” with choppy editing and plodding pacing. But the real weakness of the movie is the acting. Pascal and Nielsen are fine, and the emperors get to do some fun scenery-chewing, but whoever thought that bland pretty-boy Paul Mescal could be an inspirational protagonist on par with the iconic Russell Crowe made a severe miscalculation. Also, and I’m not saying that the rest of the cast is exactly making me feel immersed in Roman culture, but there’s something so unmistakably American about Denzel Washington. Maybe it’s his voice, maybe it’s his mannerisms, maybe it that he shares a last name with the nation’s capital, but he belongs at Caesar’s Palace much more than he belongs at… these Caesars’… palace. He’s too Vegas-y is what I’m saying.

“Gladiator II” has my permission to be a modest financial hit as long as it stays in the shadow of superior recent releases “Moana 2” and “Wicked,” the latter of which has much scarier CGI primates. But it hasn’t won me over as a movie worth recommending, and I definitely don’t consider it an awards contender. Am I not entertained? Taking into account the wording of that question, I can say that yes, I am not entertained.

Grade: C-

“Gladiator II” is rated R for strong bloody violence. Its running time is 148 minutes.

Robert R. Garver is a graduate of the Cinema Studies program at New York University. His weekly movie reviews have been published since 2006.