![]() In Centurion it's more like 200 who are attacked by the Picts. The Ninth Legion would have comprised about 4,000 men. There are some things Gladiator had that Centurion doesn't: a great screenplay, original vision, and a massive budget. Of course, there are quite a lot of fireballs in Gladiator too, during the opening battle in Germania. The centurions in Centurion get giant rolling fireballs, a weapon probably unknown to second-century Caledones. Like many things in this movie, this appears to be a homage to Gladiator, in which Maximus (Russell Crowe) says: "Whatever comes out of these gates, we've got a better chance of survival if we work together." The gladiators in Gladiator got the warriors of Scipio Africanus. ![]() "Whatever comes out of that mist, lads, you will hold the line," says Virilus. The soldiers realise they're being followed, and gather into a defensive formation. It's supposed to be mist, but it looks more like the industrial revolution has started just around the corner. Somebody has been going crazy with a second-century smoke machine. The legion heads north, deep into a Caledonian forest. It makes the puniness of the story seem that much smaller by comparison.Great balls of fireballs … looking familiar yet? ![]() 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 In ancient Scotland, a Roman officer named Quintus Dias (Michael Fassbender) is liberated from his Pictish captors by the Ninth Legion.
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