When Gladiator prevailed over all the other films released in 2000 to claim the Academy Award for Best Picture, it already felt like a old-fashioned pick, arguably one last attempt for Hollywood’s old guard to assert that the sort of movies they celebrated back in the day were still relevant. A couple of generations had passed since the time when studios proved their ability to go epic with features that drew from the swords and sandals sections of the props department. Sure, Ridley Scott stopped in his rounds to also nab a few barrels of blood. Otherwise, Gladiator was a throwback in a cinematic era that had been upended by The Matrix one year earlier.

Nearly twenty-five years later, lo, there is a sequel. If the intervening years of escalating daring in film would suggest that this saga might benefit from a spruce up or at least some deeper thinking, Scott and his collaborators aren’t having it. Gladiator II is a vintage dude movie through and through, as if made to ease couch-nestled TBS viewers into a nap on a drizzly Sunday afternoon. The screenplay by David Scarpa, a recent go-to scribe for Scott, feints towards considerations of corrupting power. There’s no depth there, though. The film concerns itself with political gamesmanship only to the degree that it needs some sort of business besides bland callbacks to its distant predecessor to fill the scenes between clanging battles in the arena.

The snoozy plot follows a beefy warrior named Hanno (Paul Mescal), who is a soldier on the losing side of a battle with the Roman empire. He is enslaved by the conquerors and soon sold to Macrinus (Denzel Washington), who correctly scouts him as a promising prospect for the gory sport of choice in the kingdom’s capital. Hanno longs from revenge against Rome’s General Acacius (Pedro Pascal), and Macrinus keeps his scheming attention on the twin brothers (Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger) who rule the empire by petulant whim. The machinations aren’t compelling and are seemingly driven by the most basic ideas of developing dramatic conflict in a narrative. Scott doesn’t add any tension with his directing. Even the combat scenes are uninvolving, more notable for CGI-enabled ludicrous elements — a big barrel’s worth of snarling simians, a manmade sea stocked with ravenous sharks — than any formidable fighting between individuals.

Compensating for everything that Gladiator II lacks, it does have Washington delivering a performance of delightfully colorful panache. A skilled Shakespearean actor, Washington attacks each of his lines like a master woodworker doing tricks with his lathe. The way he intones the word “politics” virtually transforms it into a snarling snake. He stands apart, a true champion who understands better than anyone else here that committing to the built-in campiness of the material is the best way to ensure that the audience is indeed entertained.