Films

Movie Review: Centurion

“My father believed that To truly defeat an enemy, you must know an enemy better than yourself. I know this enemy well…they pick at the scab until we bleed, hiding in the shadows….this is a new kind of war, a war without honour, without end.” ~ Quintus Dias

It’s 117. A.D. and the Roman Frontier is plagued by Picts. After a 20 year stalemate, the Roman legions have been given the order to break it by any means possible. I really looked forward to this movie because Michael Fassbender is an amazing actor and a period film about the Roman Legion was bound to be interesting, right? Well, sadly, this was not the case for Centurion.

York, Garrison of the Ninth Legion

Meet Quintus, an escapee from a rather nasty Celtic raid who is full of cliched quotes and worldly wisdom. Meet Titus Flavius Virilus, played by Dominic West (The Wire, 300) in a drinking hall, arm wrestling, brawling and beating his manly chest. Dominic West’s talents are wasted in this movie where he plays a two-dimensional, brutish Roman general. Meet Etain, the overly beautiful, stereotypical, angry, mouth pouting Celtic warrior wearing way too much make-up to warrant taking her seriously. Her tongue has been cut out by the Romans and of course, she’s out for revenge *yawn*.

After being ambushed by great-Celtic balls of fire, the remnants of Flavius’s legion run from Etain’s vengeance. They make a move to save Flavius but can’t do it quickly enough to get away safely and he tells his men to leave him behind. After, he is left to valiantly battle Etain to the death and that doesn’t go so well. The men flee over the mountains and predictably, Etain and her band of blue-faced merry men hunt them down.

Cue beautiful, blonde witch of the woods, Arienne, played by Imogen Poots (28 Weeks Later, V for Vendetta). She takes in Quintus and his men, and hides and protects them from her former people who have exiled her as a witch. Quintus and his men leave the next morning to attempt to make it south to another Roman encampment but that pesky mascara laden She-Ra manages to find them and more (see: yawn) violence ensues. Quintus manages to make it back to Agricola but the massacre of the legion looks bad so they try and erase its existence by killing Quintus. Well, Quintus isn’t having it and runs away back to his woodland girlfriend to live happily ever after.



There is violence, and more violence, and then some more slo-mo violence, all of it gratuitous, unnecessary and made to appeal to thirteen year old boys. Whereas other period films, like Valhalla Rising, which was as violent, if not more so, intersperse character depth, cinematography or an interesting plot twist – this has none of those cool features. It’s just visual gore for the sake of dramatic effect and no substance.

What’s in this movie? stock throw away tough guy lines, stereotypical Roman Centurions and a bad, campy version of Celts that’s more fantasy than reality. The dialogue was banal and laughable. The only thing I enjoyed about this movie was the ending credits and Liam Cunningham of Game of Thrones fame (Davos Seaworth). Despite all the action, the film barely kept my attention; it was just plain boring and painfully predictable. It’s an hour and a half you will never get back. Don’t do that to yourself, just don’t watch it. ~ Sandra

Peter’s Take: The story of Rome’s Ninth Legion has been made into a few movies and tv series, which is not hard to understand. Around the years 117-122 it seems that this Roman force suffered defeat and destruction somewhere in Britain, although historians are divided on what their fate actually was. Still, it allows the filmmaker a good starting point to tell his story and take it to some interesting place.

Sadly, this film fails to create an interesting story. Instead we get many one-dimensional characters following along a predictable plot with poorly-done action scenes. The big battle – where the supposedly three-thousand Roman legion looks to be more like a hundred men – involves a semi-ridiculous attack by dozens of boulderish balls of fire rolling into the Roman line, followed by the army of Picts. The fighting you get to see is almost entirely one-second shots of a sword being swung, a blade going into a man, or a head getting chopped off. The Picts are victorious and massacre the Romans – an hour or so later Michael Fassbender and several other men pop up on the battlefield and find each other.  They proceed to do a much better job at fighting the Picts, proving once again the movie adage that whereas 3000 men will fail, seven will succeed.

There are some good scenes and Fassbender fulfills his job as the lead character, but overall the film is quite a disappointment. I did like the added touch of showing us Hadrian’ Wall being built, although it does happen a couple of years later than when the film is set in.

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