Centurion
Overlong and poorly edited, the beautiful scenery compensates, as does the sharp, bleached photography.
Director Neil Marshall arrived in a blaze of glory with his first two features; the gritty and gory Dog Soldiers, a celebration of brotherhood in the face of werewolves, and The Descent, a claustrophobic caving nightmare relying on strong cliche-free female leads. Both were fantastically original British horrors, and then it all went horribly, horribly wrong with Doomsday. Marshall's apocalyptic nightmare was ugly, messy and ultimately boring, showing none of the strength of character or story development of his previous work.
Two years later, Marshall is back, not with a horror, but a historical epic - he's telling us the little-known story of the Roman Ninth Legion. It's AD 117, and the Roman Empire's dominion over Europe has come to a halt in northern England at the hands of the brutal native Picts. Michael Fassbender is Quintus Dias, the survivor of a bloody raid on a Roman fort. He leads a battered team of Roman soldiers, including Noel Clarke's Macros and David Morrissey's Bothos, to rescue the captured General Virilus (Dominic West).
They are aided by a mute Pict traitor in the form of former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko. Supposedly a fearsome warrior, the pouting Etain unfortunately looks like something from America's Next Top Model, but the miscast Kurylenko handles her fight scenes admirably. The only other woman in this battle-torn flick is Arian (Imogen Poots), a misunderstood earth mother required to look doe-eyed at a sweaty Fassbender.
Centurion is the legion's weary journey, facing battle after battle, and there are only so many ways you can show a man getting dispatched before it just becomes bloodthirsty. You know those awesomely shot war scenes at the beginning of Gladiator? It's that, ad nauseam; the pint-sized legion face many one-on-one fights, all ending with increasingly gruesome killings. It's staggering that a film that contains Fassbender, Morrissey, West and Liam Cunningham can't muster a memorable performance.
Overlong and poorly edited, the beautiful scenery compensates - as does the sharp, bleached photography - and moments of treachery liven up the plot. Marshall remains one not to go for the easy ending, to his credit, but this is almost as disappointing as Doomsday.
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