Director: Neil Marshall
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Dominic West & David Morrissey
A decent enough historical thriller that while light on plot and high in violence is still entertaining enough as a chase film and features a good cast.
Constantly striving to show that UK cinema can compete with the USA in creating action thrillers even on a small budget, the films of Neil Marshall has been consistently entertaining despite placing emphasis on action over plot and frequently finding influence from better known and better received films. Marshall’s latest, Centurion, is his first to play with an actual historical event, that surrounding the Roman Ninth Legion which disappeared on a march into Northern England. Around this mystery, Marshall has developed another action thriller based around an unknown band of survivors. The result is still an entertaining thriller though again emphasises action and violence overall.
Quintus Dias (Fassbender) is a Roman centurion stationed in England who is taken prisoner after an assault on his garrison by native rebels known as the Picts. When he escapes he crosses paths with the Roman Ninth Legion led by Titus Virilus (West) who have been charged with wiping out the Picts to complete the Roman conquest of England at whatever cost but a trap laid by their Pict scout Etain (Olga Kurylenko) sees the Ninth Legion massacred with just Quintus and a small band of survivors left who then find themselves on the run for safety and hunted by the Pict forces who, unbeknownst to Quintus, are driven by revenge by the Pict leader of the death of his child at the hand of one of Quintus’ men.
Built around some energetic action sequences, though high on violence and gore, Centurion works fairly well as a straight action thriller. The main characters are on the run, literally with the punishment of a violent death facing them if they slow or falter. There is some predictability involved in the assemblage of the survivors on the run with them filling certain personality types and the fates, even order of fates, somewhat easy to predict but, unlike the recent Clash of the Titans remake, more members of this band of men get to have moments to actually demonstrate character which is helped by the cast involved. The ending of the film is to be expected since history already shows no survivors were ever seen but this only detracts a little from the overall enjoyment. What does detract more from the enjoyment is the facelessness of the antagonists. Some comments are made in regards to the Picts, the country’s native inhabitants, being justified in their hatred due to decades of violence at the hands of the Romans but aside from this there is little done to humanise them or portray them as anything more than savages. The main Pict character, the scout Etain that tricks then traps the Ninth Legion, is a mute. Any drama to be had at really deciding who are the victims and who are the guilty considering the Romans are part of an invading force is rarely touched upon.
Centurion does feature some decent performances from several good actors. Michael Fassbender, following on from the acclaimed performances in Hunger, Fish Tank and Inglourious Basterds shows that he is capable of leading more commercial films in bigger roles while his band of survivors feature a mixed bag of performances from Liam Cunningham, likeable and grumpy; David Morrissey; Riz Ahmed, sneaky and untrustworthy and Noel Clarke whose character is generally unlikeable. Dominic West relishes the chance to play a loutish yet charming Roman General in Titus and Imogen Poots is likeable as a possible love interest for Quintus. Olga Kurylenko is perfectly convincing as a savage but there is otherwise little that is memorable about her performance though the underwritten nature of the character holds some blame.
Centurion is a decent action thriller with some novelty over the period of history in which it is set. There are a few likeable performances and Fassbender makes for an able leading man and some of the action sequences do thrill but there otherwise the film is generally average with the high level of violence, number of underwritten characters and predictable plot preventing this from being a great action film instead of just an average one.
Rating: 3/5
