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Neil Marshall’s ambitious movie is heavily flawed and unpolished. The ambition of the project is its greatest downfall, instead of catering the movie towards the budget (as in Dog Soldiers), Marshall stretches whatever he has over the slim back of the budget which results in silly costumes, make-up and special effects. Okay, this does not make a movie bad necessarily, but it does should the movie take itself so bloody seriously like this one does. Apart from Liam Cunningham and Fassbender, whose grim face is actually not that bad to behold, the cast is awful, which might be owned to the poor script and dull characters, who knows. From the first few minutes, any notion of historical accuracy went overboard and the movie has so many errors, inaccuracies and logical inconsistencies, it is like watching a play by the 5th grade, without having to clap because the Roman is your neighbour’s kid. The story is pretty much non-existent, a simple hit and run movie, which might fit the theme, but prevents from the movie to become more than a simple action romp though Norther Britain at any point. Furthermore, I loathe a movie which depicts the Romans as victims of any sort, they were the invaders and did it out of pure imperial greed, they never were heroes. A sluggish and pointless film, stay away from it. I give it 1 1/2 because of the subject matter which had so much potential and I am always interested in anything related to British History but this one is a stinker.

Writer/director Neil Marshall has style and hopefully will continue to bring it forth on cinema screens for years to come, if he decides to travel back to America or not. Many lesser auteurs would have taken that Hollywood payday and looked for another to follow. Marshall, however, hot on the success of his spelunking horror/thriller The Descent, made Doomsday with US money only to see it falter out of the starting gate. Perhaps he had deals to remain stateside, but instead found himself back home in the UK to craft his war epic of Northern English history. Going back to 117 AD, Centurion relays the tale of the lost Roman Ninth Legion—the last ditch attempt by the great empire to oust guerilla Picts from England. With no survivors to tell the tale, Marshall’s film recalls a similar work of unknown bloodshed in 300, more portraying the heroism and courage of these men fighting for their land, for their general, and for their freedom than the facts.

A lot goes on during the first half of the movie, starting with an introduction to Michael Fassbender’s titular Centurion, Quintus Dias, as our narrator, it being neither the beginning of his story, nor the end. Second in command of his Roman force, his men are massacred mercilessly—Marshall never afraid to show exploding heads, pierced limbs, blood covered roads, or shrieking screams of pain and death—his survival only earned due to his ability to speak the Pict language. Brought back to their king, Ulrich Thomsen’s farmer turned murderer Gorlacon, the Centurion is cut and beaten, tortured to learn the whereabouts of his superiors and their next moves. Refusing to betray his empire as he bleeds in front of the king’s son, showing the young boy the face of his enemy, Dias soon finds escape, running through the snowy, mountainous expanse, captors on his trail and running towards a newly dispatched regime of Romans looking to take control of England once and for all.

For completion of review, please visit: http://www.jaredmobarak.com/2010/08/23/centurion/

Well, I liked it. Maybe it’s because it’s what I was expecting, an historical tale filled with bloody action – but not too much, and I’m ok with it – capable to keep you nailed to the sofa, or chair or whatever, very entertaining only if you don’t ask too much about the script: sometimes there are strange things happening (I don’t want to spoiler it, but the screenplay has some flaws). The characters are really cool, Quintus Dias and Bricks are played by two of the best british actors of the XXI century – Michael Fassbender and Liam Cunningham (that reminds me of their intense and wonderful scene in Steve McQueen’s Hunger) – and behind the deadly tracker Etain there is the former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko, beautiful and savage. The atmosphere is sad and desperate, and the location where the movie was shot is awesome (and very inhospitable): you can smell the fear and the pain of the Centurions running for their life, hiding from the Picts, the situations are various and you don’t imagine what could happen in the very next minutes…This movie is different from the previous Marshall’s works, there’s no horror and no sci fi, but there are some points in common, especially with Doomsday (yes, Marshall loves strong chicks): this is not his best work but it’s still a nice shot. I reccomend it.