|
How entertaining? ★★★★☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 11 October 2012
This a review of SPARTACUS: VENGEANCE. |
“There are many things she wouldn’t have wanted, yet they are so,” Spartacus, about his wife, to Mira
After the prequel SPARTACUS: GODS OF THE ARENA, SPARTACUS: VENGEANCE follows on from SPARTACUS: BLOOD AND SAND. That sentence is a tongue-twister. We join our hero (now played by Liam McIntyre, after the passing of Andy Whitfield) and his escaped gladiators terrorising the countryside around Capua. The Roman establishment is shaken and shocked at such rebellion, and for good reason – the opening is a beautifully choreographed melee, demonstrating what happens when soldiers take on the skills of the gladiators. There has been a real step-up in combat portrayal, and camera-work. If you’re a fan of 300’s action style, this is very close: six-packed dudes slicing up foes in blood-soaked ebullience.
After the prequel SPARTACUS: GODS OF THE ARENA, SPARTACUS: VENGEANCE follows on from SPARTACUS: BLOOD AND SAND. That sentence is a tongue-twister. We join our hero (now played by Liam McIntyre, after the passing of Andy Whitfield) and his escaped gladiators terrorising the countryside around Capua. The Roman establishment is shaken and shocked at such rebellion, and for good reason – the opening is a beautifully choreographed melee, demonstrating what happens when soldiers take on the skills of the gladiators. There has been a real step-up in combat portrayal, and camera-work. If you’re a fan of 300’s action style, this is very close: six-packed dudes slicing up foes in blood-soaked ebullience.
|
|
|
|
|
VENGEANCE will not convert new fans. It is more of what we’ve come to expect, but with greater polishing. The violence, sex and nudity are certainly not for the squeamish. For the uninitiated, this is far from Kubrick’s picture as it is possible to get without being an experimental project. While VENGEANCE, and its season predecessors, indicts imperialism, there is a B-movie exploitativeness to proceedings. The show doesn’t have GLADIATOR’s epic majesty, or ROME’s brains, but what is on offer is a ridiculously grand guignol ride of excess. A total guilty pleasure.
Spartacus has three goals when we meet him again:
- Keep his band of men and women alive,
- Help Crixus find Naevia, and
- Ultimately to revenge himself on Glaber for putting his wife into slavery.
There are plenty of sub-strands and spanners diluting his objectives. All sides leave a trail of destruction, as well as a huge body count. I’m guessing the budget is bigger, or maybe just better deployed, and now not constrained to the ludus and arena, the set-pieces and strategizing are audacious. VENGEANCE sometimes resembles MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE in the schemes and actions to outwit the Romans.
Holding together a show with several cast changes can’t be easy, and adding in a prequel season, to deliver not only coherence, but eliciting an abundance of abashed rapture, the creators might well feel a sense of satisfaction. It looks like there is to be one more series, bring it on!
|
|
