Entertaining if bloated Hollywood romp that manages to subvert enough of the tropes of the original to not make it feel like it's too much of a complete retelling, even if Ridley Scott is constantly shoving pieces of the original in our faces to the point I feel Russell Crowe should've been properly credited as lead actor.
The underlying neoliberal politics of the film, however, are unfortunately the film's weakest element: untimely, messy, and overtly nationalist. As expected, it is not the system that is the problem, but corrupt individuals that need to be dealt with. Having Denzel Washington, a former slave, achieve his dream of burning down an empire by igniting a spark that was already there, would have been infinity more entertaining (and barely any more historically revisionist than Scott's vision of Rome already is), but alas.