Those About To Die

Subtle it isn’t. But for anyone counting down the days until the belated sequel to Ridley Scott’s epic hits our screens, this lavish alternate history lesson is a solid stopgap.

If "Those About to Die" sometimes feels like a neutered, TV version of that project ["Gladiator 2"] – despite a budget reportedly north of $140 million – it's still entertaining enough for fans of violent period pieces to serve as a hearty appetizer to that likely full meal.

Ultimately, Those About to Die is not really for those people whose Roman Empire is the Roman Empire. It is for people who want the ancient world, where the stakes of sex and violence were far lower than the present day, to give licence to something primal, something carnal, in them. Emmerich doesn’t do subtle, and so Those About to Die is suitably, viscerally, bold.

The gladiator combat and chariot races (plus Thrones veteran Iwan Rheon) are great, but they're just one fraction of an overstuffed series that tries too hard to cover every aspect of life in Rome during the early days of The Colosseum.

Those About to Die is 10 hours of unashamed guilty-pleasure hokum. [5 - 25 Aug 2024, p.4]

This isn’t the high road to Rome, though neither is it the lowest. There is some history mashed up in here and an evident attempt to fill the screen and story with accurate period details, though the digital effects and backgrounds tend to take one out of the human reality and into a video game.

It's not the worst show to watch about chariot racers, gladiators, emperors, and the vicious Roman Empire, but one that's certainly inferior to the multiple classics the genre had to offer in the last few decades.

There is entertainment, but its presence is fleeting and often arrives unintentionally in the form of catastrophically poor dialogue or racing scenes full of just enough excitement to distract from the supremely average CG littered throughout.

With CGI that looks like it’s been made for a Windows XP screensaver, accents that vary from Welsh to English, Italian and French, and cliched lines (“friends close, enemies closer”!) that even have the Oscar-winning Hopkins fighting for his life, and Those About to Die quickly becomes a confusing mess.

All the elements are here for a pricy, enjoyable, campy soap opera. Instead it takes itself too seriously, to increasingly dull effect.

Those About to Die was largely directed by Roland Emmerich, and although it has some of the Moonfall and 2012 director’s trademark lunacy, there’s ultimately not nearly enough of that to provide consistent entertainment. As drama, it’s generally bad, but it’s sometimes fun-bad, which I say as somebody who really likes Emmerich in “fun-bad” mode.