Centurion Review

Some films take you by suprise, for good or bad. Kick Ass is a recent example of a film I expected to dislike and ended up quite enjoying. Other times you expect to enjoy something and end up disappointed (The Wrestler) or absolutely gutted (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. There IS no fourth film.) And then there are the films that do exactly, precisely, with zero deviation, what you think they are going to do. Welcome to the Centurion review.

The normally excellent Michael Fassbender plays Quintas Dias, the titular Centuron, whose battalion of Roman soldiers invading Britain is slaughtered by the native Picts early on in the film. Dias is captured but escapes and joins up with the Roman 9th Legion who are also wiped out save for Dias and four or five others. They are hunted by mute Pict tracker Olga Kurylenko and her crew and it is at this point that Centurion settles into being a chase movie. A very long chase movie.

To its credit, Centurion is a film that looks and feels bigger than it actually is. I would imagine the budget for the film was fairly low, very low by the standards of most movies of this genre, and for the most part the film succeeds in not being hampered by that issue. The film makes good use of its locations and the tough Scottish landscape with its cold, wet climate and much of the photography is stunning. But, in the end, who cares? Not me. Maybe had Centurion been a brisk, get-in-and-get-out, 85/90 minute job I could have gone with it. Though that said, a manageable running time didn't help my lack of enjoyment of Apocalypto, Centurion's spiritual cousin. As it is, the film takes what feels like an age to do very little. Michael Fassbender is one of my favourite young actors, not "British" actors as he is so often called by the way; he is Irish. I'm just saying. His work in Eden Lake, Fish Tank and in particular his stunning portrayal of Bobby Sands in Hunger have set him apart as an actor of considerable talent. Here though he is given very little to get his teeth into other than the film's many, many fight sequences. While he aquits himself well in these scenes, there is never any real sense of growth as he goes from centurion to General and, weirdly, I never really believed him as a leader of men. Fassbender is supported by The Wire's Dominic West who seems to have forgotten how to act, David Morrissey who I'm not sure has ever known how to act, Noel Clarke as a very East London sounding Roman andOlga Kurylenko as the silent but deadly Etain. When your most believeable and charismatic character hasn't got a single line to say you know you're in trouble.

You know exactly what you're going to get from Neil Marshall and I guess there is some comfort in familiarity. There's nothing inherently wrong with a meat and potatoes genre film, but what can I say? I like a spoon of gravy too.

4.5/10