Movie Review: Centurion

I'd seen Centurion for rent at Redbox and it looked like a cheesy B-grade film about the Roman invasion of the British Isles. But my recent infatuation of JJ Feild got me to take a closer look...the fact that Michael Fassbender had the lead and that it was free to watch on Amazon Prime convinced me to give it a shot. 

I was pleasantly surprised with the movie overall. Along with Fassbender (playing Centurion Quintas Dias) and Feild (as Thax), there were some other familiar faces: Dominic West as General Titus Flavius Virilus, David Morrissey as Bothos, Noel Clarke (Mickey!) as Marcos, Liam Cunningham as Brick, Olga Kurylenko as Etain and Imogen Poots as Arianne. 

For the most part, Centurion is your typical historical fiction. Lots of battles, horses, running and fighting...blood and guts, that sort of thing. A garrison of Roman soldiers stationed at an outpost are besieged and lose to a horde of Pict warriors.  Centurion Quintas Dias is the lone survivor and is taken back to the king of the Picts' village. He is saved by a legion of Roman soldiers commanded by General Titus, which are then led into a trap by Etain. Only a handful survive and thus begins the chase across the barren Scottish wasteland.

Clearly earning its R rating for gory violence and excessive profanity, overall it's not that bad of a movie. Much better than I anticipated, to say the least. The score is excellent and the scenery, while stark, is beautiful. 

Near the end of the movie, it's mentioned that the legion is the Ninth, which makes their emblem the famous missing "Eagle of the Ninth" (there's a 1954 novel by that name). When I was looking for a poster, The Eagle came up in my search. The Eagle is set a few years after The Centurion, as the son of one of the members of the ninth legion seeks to retrieve their missing Eagle. It's not a bad movie, even though it stars Channing Tatum...Jamie Bell, Donald Sutherland and Mark Strong help make up for that. 

If you're in the mood for a piece of violent historical fiction, I'd recommend checking out  The Centurion (Fassbender, West, Clarke and Poots) or The Eagle (Tatum, Bell, Sutherland and Strong). Pick your cast...pick your poison. :)

Enjoy and happy Tuesday!

~ Katie