When Denzel Washington sweeps into “Gladiator II” — Ridley Scott’s epic about ancient Rome and men at war and sometimes in love — it’s with such easy grace that you may mistake his character’s loose bearing with indifference. What you’re seeing is power incarnate, power that’s so raw and so supremely self-possessed that it doesn’t announce itself. And it keeps taking as warriors enter the Colosseum to fight and die in the blood sport that gives this sequel to Scott’s 2000 drama “Gladiator” its sober backdrop and much of its juice. It is a performance of charismatic evil and of mesmerizing stardom both. Like Scott’s filmmaking in this pleasurably immersive spectacle — with its foreign ancients and mentalities, exotic animals and equally unfamiliar calls to human nobility — Washington’s performance has skill, intensity and absolute confidence.

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Persons: Denzel Washington, — Ridley, Scott Organizations: Washington Locations: Rome