1/13/2024 0 Comments Film centurion![]() ![]() After seeing West playing a succession of highly flawed characters, it's a refreshing change to see him playing a stalwart soldier who always does the best thing for his troops. Dias's restrained, thoughtful but effective style of leadership is contrasted against Dominic West's formidably heroic Virilus, which West handles excellently. Fassbender carries the film with aplomb, and makes for a worthy leading man. The film has an impressive cast, with the current-hot-property Michael Fassbender starring as Quintus Dias. The Ninth Legion, aided by a treacherous Pictish scout and the escaped Dias, is ambushed and Dias and a small number of survivors must escape back to the Roman lines.Ĭenturion is the fourth movie from British director Neil Marshall, following on from the well-received Dog Soldiers and The Descent (and the not-so-well-received Doomsday), and can be seen as part of a mini-trend of low-budget Roman and medieval films (also including Black Death, Ironclad and The Eagle) made in the last few years. ![]() Determined to end the Pictish threat, Roman governor Agricola dispatches the Ninth Legion under the charismatic General Titus Flavius Virilus to resolve the situation. During a Pictish raid on a Roman border garrison, Centurion Quintus Dias is taken prisoner. The Roman Empire is attempting to complete the conquest of Britain, but is facing fierce resistance from the northern tribes, the Picts. It makes the puniness of the story seem that much smaller by comparison.AD 117. When it isn’t getting up close and personal with the mutilation, Sam McCurdy’s cinematography is the best thing going in “Centurion,” expansive and exact as it rolls over the forbiddingly beautiful Scottish landscape. The acting ranges from obvious to over-obvious, about what you’d expect for a film crammed with doofus chit-chat and sage-like proclamations that might be excerpts from “Lost.” Most of the carnage in Marshall’s film isn’t realistic or even imaginative, just unwatchably gross the one exception is a terrifically staged ambush-with-rolling-fireballs. They scotch that plan by annihilating the Romans, whose survivors then spend the bulk of the movie getting chased down by a mute, vengeful Pictish babe with Barbarella eyeshadow (Olga Kurylenko). Meanwhile, the stout-hearted General Titus Virilus (Dominic West) has received orders to annihilate the Picts. The Picts swear less and converse in Gaelic, except when they speak English with a lovely Scottish burr. In short order we learn that he lives long enough to narrate the movie (unless he’s dead and played by Kevin Spacey), that he proudly resists Pict rendition (“I am a soldier of Rome! I will not yield!”), and that he often employs four-letter words of Germanic and Anglo-Saxon origin. Cut to Roman centurion and escaped POW Quintus Dias (Michael Fassbender) as he scrambles through the snow, shirtless, bloodied and bound. Probably they were massacred by wild-haired Caledonians with spears, a view assumed by writer-director Neil Marshall in his historically detailed but epically vacant bloodbath of a movie, which devotes herculean effort to splash-happy graphic dismemberment - most major body parts get their turn - but overlooks the little matter of a script.Ī preamble explains the grim situation for the Roman Empire, locked for 20 years in a stalemate with the proto-terrorist tactics of the Picts. What exactly happened to them no one knows. “Centurion” is about Romans getting slaughtered by Picts in the harsh northern regions of Britannia, where, history tells us, the entire Ninth Legion disappeared around 117 A.D. For stupid, look no further than “Centurion.” There are six standard types of violence in film these days: Tarantino, comic book, Scorsese, martial arts, horror and stupid. Rated: R (strong bloody violence, grisly images, language)Ĭast: Michael Fassbender, Dominic West, Olga Kurylenko, Andreas Wisniewski, Noel Clarke ![]()
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