“Gladiator II” Review

“Violence is the international language.” This line from Gladiator II is accurate not merely because action films with more blood than words play better abroad. Action also happens to be director strength, made clear from the appeal of 2000’s Gladiator and last year’s Napoleon. While Scott does lean into his strength with big battles of brutality, his dramatic staging for these awesome sequences has the eloquence of a melodrama, feeling like a soap opera placed on top of an epic ...