Centurion Review
Posted by Erik Luers on 08.23.2010
Gory fluff which works well...
Michael Fassbender ... Centurion Quintus Dias
Olga Kurylenko ... Etain
Imogen Poots ... Arianne
Dominic West ... General Titus Virilus
Ulrich Thomsen ... Gorlacon
Oh how quickly the seasons tend to come and go. As the summer comes to a close, there is talk, as there always seems to be, about whether or not this moviegoing season successfully bridged the ever widening gap between art and commerce. Going through the list of mega-blockbusters, the number one film of the summer (and so far, the year) is Toy Story 3, a sequel from Pixar. Another highly successful film was not only a sequel but based on a pre-sold property, a teen novel: The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. No, only Christopher Nolan's expertly made Inception, large-budgeted as it may have been, can be defined as an original work, grossing blockbuster numbers while being based on nothing other than itself. Looking further down the money maker list, there are the mid-level successes such as Salt, The Other Guys, and Grown Ups. And now we find ourselves in late August, a time which always seems to bring out the smaller, riskier films with niche audiences and dim financial prospects; next weekend (8/27 – 8/29) will prove to be the quietest weekend in Hollywood since the weekend before the opening of Iron Man 2 back in May. And yet, there is a fun, energy-pumping new work from writer/director Neil Marshall, the man behind another late August release (albeit back in 2006), The Descent, that a lot of people will really get a kick out of. It's fast moving, violent, great to look at, and simple enough to work on a purely visceral and primal level. Thinking back, it's hard to remember what you liked so much about it, but damn if it wasn't fun while it played out there on the big screen. It's dopey and crude, but never offensive, and perhaps that's all we can ask for at this time of year.
The film in question is Centurion, a “sword and sandal” epic which features no sand and runs a scant hundred minutes or so. If you think you know how this movie plays out, chances are you're probably right. We have the Roman, Anglo-Saxon whites (with very few other ethnicities sprinkled in) versus the nomadic and grungy-looking bad guys who appear like they just walked off the Battlesfield Earth movie poster. Chronologically speaking, we are not yet a few hundred years removed from the death of Jesus Christ, and our protagonists are known as the Ninth Legion, a collective group of Romans whom were ultimately betrayed and defeated, although not necessarily by the same faction. They were fighting a losing battle and, rather than suffer a loss that would squander Roman morale, were being wiped from the record books by their government. Draw your own American/Iraq parallels here.
While the film is a little stingy on the details, a Q & A with Marshall which took place after the screening – not to mention a quick and insightful trip to Google upon arriving home – helped this particular writer to understand the historical context in which the movie plays. Sure, there is the obligatory onscreen text at the beginning of the film (par for the course for any film which takes place before 1960, it would seem), but I would argue that we have become inured to it thanks to how little (the film assumes) we knew going in. The textual backstory should really come at the end of the movie, for by then some of the headscratching names will be a little more familiar and will allow us to connect the names to the faces and the locations to the scenic view of the settings. Centurion strives to be historically accurate while all we really care about is whether or not it's historically sufficient. After all, there is computer-generated blood to be shed.
As the film gets going, our main character, Quintus (played by the hardworking Michael Fassbender), is kidnapped early on by the enemy, the Brits of Norfolk we assume (although some speak a mix between Scottish and Gaillac, so......), tortured, and then locked away in a small wooden shack. If you think he has it bad, you should see some of his other men (i.e., the slaughtered). Persistent and strong willed, Quintus manages to break free and start the journey back to his soldiers, unexpectedly coming across his Roman brothers not long after. And so a big battle soon takes place between the Romans and the Brits (who want Quintus back in their possession), complete with giant fireballs, throat-slitting, arrow-shooting, and glorious beheadings, leaving all but a few of the Roman soldiers dead. The Ninth Legion is no more. Among a sea of fallen bodies, a few select men, lead by the wounded but still alive Quintus, head off to tell the higher-ups of their defeat, given they can survive the long trek back to them. But they are never safe. Etain (Olga Kurylenko), a spiritual, traitorous, blood thirsty warrior, is hot on their heels, tracking their scent like a trained dog and overly dedicated assassin. She may be more dangerous than any one man, for she has the inside information and dramatic backstory that a super-villain must have. Years ago, Etain and her family were raped by Romans – she even had her tongue cut out by one of them – and her burning desire is now to collect as much Roman blood and ashes as possible as a sign of revenge. Her undying one-track mind would undoubtedly make her the number one draft pick for any Greco-Roman sports team.
At its very core, Centurion is crafted like a road trip/chase movie, focusing on a small camaraderie who keep moving forward while remembering to have eyes in the back of their heads. They have minimal resources (one man is a cook and has some sound advice on lethal mushrooms), and therefore must trust in each other's savvy warrior intuition and skills in order to stay the course. And what a beautiful course it turns out to be. Marshall and his cinematographer,Sam McCurdy, present the viewer with some of Scotland's most remarkably vast landscapes, from snow-covered plateaus and mountains that appear to go on for miles to the elegantly calm and peaceful forests which sparkle with greenery and sunshine. Marshall may have puts his actors (and location scouts) through hell while working on this movie, but the visual juxtaposing between the cold and warm environments that our characters hike through helps to emphasize the incredibly taxing journey. In freezing cold temperatures, the men are safe from intruders but are at the mercy of the brutal weather. In the woods, the men are supported by the temperature but are prime targets for Etain and her pact. No matter the budget, Marshall makes Centurion look like a gory, politically driven thriller on a grand scale, encompassing numerous picturesque landscapes.
Less a film for history buffs than KNG EFX. Group worshipers, Marshall's film, as morbid as this may sound, is at its creative peak when delving up ways to kill off its game cast. If you've been waiting for a film where a man gets a spear to the genitals while urinating, then Centurion is for you. Felt mainstream cinema has been sorely lacking in realistic beheadings and all the strenuous back-and-forth cutting of the throat that goes along with it? There is no longer a need to be frustrated. Men get their skulls bashed in and animals get their intestines sliced out. A woman (the director's wife, no less) gets an arrow shoved through her eye late in the picture. One man gets a spike through the torso and continues to push it through his body and into his enemy standing behind him. One poor chap gets hit with a bunch of arrows and then falls one hundred feet to the rocky water below. Another gets a sword right into the heart. Needless to say, the film is quite extreme in the carnage it depicts, but if this doesn't make it more realistic, it sure as hell makes it more flashy. Much of the murder and mayhem is over the top, and yet you may feel gleefully barbarous while watching it. It's as if you are in a Roman coliseum, cheering on the death of the next unlucky sucker. It's a perverse, brutalized sense of fun with a body count in the thousands.
Even a late, old school, romantic subplot works, specifically because the two actors involved possess a timeless feel within their distinct facial features. Fassbender looks like an old stoic male movie star, while the lovely Imogen Poots has a natural beauty which seems to be lacking in most motion picture ingénues these days. Their characters' relationship builds out of mutual respect for one another, two outcasts fighting for survival against the scary others. Put another way, they are more consensual than sexual. When push comes to shove, we find them easy to root for.
Etain and Arianne (Poots' character) allow Neil Marshall to show how women retaliate against the men who have done them wrong; Etain chooses to kill them, while Arianne decides to house and protect her people's enemies. For being kind and caring, the young woman is of course deemed a witch. If The Descent was about women working together in order to stay alive and destroy the enemy, Centurion shows us women motivated by their own personal need for retribution. Marshall may very well be a male feminist. In an age before sexism, the director pointed at the after-screening discussion, women were fighting alongside their men as equals. And they were just as sick and twisted as the rest of them. All's fair in love and war, I suppose. Now start recruiting your friends.
The 411: Neil Marshall is becoming quite the strong genre director. His latest offering, Centurion, while no great classic, is a fun, mindless movie with style. Its violence will make you wince, and its story will have you eager to rush home and read up on your Roman history. Is the film historically accurate? To a point. Have no fear though, the film is easygoing viewing for people with a strong stomach. You came to see blood, and Marshall delivers. Some of it is gloppy makeup, some of it is CG. Normally, the computerized fake stuff irks me, but not here. The whole film is a fantasy (well, for the winning side, anyway) that is less concerned with lecturing the audience than with providing them with a good time. It delivers machismo action porn for the bloodthirsty enthusiast. It wears its guts on its sleeve.
