Centurion (2010)

Centurion

Directed by: Neil Marshall

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Olga Kurylenko, Dominic West

Released: 2010

Country of Origin: UK

Runtime: 97 min.

It's rare when an epic, historical film impresses me. I've noticed a couple things that are common in these films which prevent them from shifting past marginally good into the realm of great film-making. The first is dialogue: For some reason every actor feels the need to deliver each line like it's the most important thing they have ever said. It's an unnecessary form of over-the-top speech that feels unnatural and often crosses over to just sounding cheesy. The best thing you can do with dialogue is to craft it so the audience isn't aware that someone actually sat down and wrote the lines. I don't have a problem with over-the-top acting, in fact some of my favorite performances are extremely over-the-top (for example: Jack Nicholson in The Shinning). But it only works when the performance is coupled with an equally over-the-top character. The other major problem is using action and violence to make up for a lack-luster story or script. I understand that most people going to these films are mainly there to see a film full of action, it's something that comes with the territory. Most audiences are able to forgive missteps in a movie as long as the action is exciting and limbs are flying. I love seeing copious amounts of blood, gore, and severed heads as much, if not more, than the average person, but it doesn't make substituting violence for story any better. I would really love to see a historical epic that swerves away from these cinematic pot-holes, and based on the strength of Neil Marshall's previous efforts, I had a small hope that Centurion might be that film.

Centurion stars Michael Fassbender as Quintus Dias, a Roman centurion who is having what might be the worst week of his life. After a vicious band of Pict warriors slaughters his entire company, he is captured, tortured, and dunked in piss-water. Somehow, he is able to escape and make a run for it across a whole lot of snowy mountains. When a legion of Roman soldiers, lead by Dominic West, finally crosses paths with him, he is forced to join up and head right back to the place he escaped from. On the way to kill those nasty Picts, the legion's guide Etain, a mute Pict warrior played by former Bond-girl Olga Kurylenko, betrays the group and leads them straight into a trap. After most of the legion is killed off by giant fireballs, a small band of survivors, lead by Quintus Dias, heads to the Pict camp to save their captured general. During the rescue attempt, one of the soldiers decides to make things worse by killing the Pict general's son. This really pisses off the Picts, who leave in pursuit and take a blood oath to kill every last one of the Roman soldiers. The rest of film includes a lot of running, hiding, running some more, hiding, eating half digested mush from an animal's stomach, more running, and a whole lot of dying.

After watching him in Inglorious Bastards and Hunger, I was starting to think Michael Fassbender could do no wrong. He is one of more impressive actors working today, and I fully expect many great performances from him in the future. But his role in Centurion is definitely not one of them. I'm not saying he's horrible, he does the best he can with what he's been given, but what he's given isn't much. The script is awful, and feels like if you copied and pasted lines from just about any epic war film, you could come up with the same script used in Centurion. There is absolutely nothing in this movie you haven't seen before. It's formulaic film-making through and through, which is an awful disappointment from Neil Marshall. Marshall's previous films, The Decent and Doomsday, took generic genre conventions and created films that were uncharacteristically well done. The Decent was one of the best horror films of the last decade, and one of the few that actually scared me. Marshall's characters were uncommonly real, and more authentic than what we are used to in horror films. He spent a large amount of time with character development, so that once the horror started, you actually cared about what was happening to the people in the film. Doomsday was arguably far less of a film than The Decent, but the wild glee and craziness of the film made it a complete joy to watch. It was definitely not made on auto-pilot, which is exactly how Centurion feels. The joy and excitement of film-making that flowed out of Doomsday is nowhere to be found, like Marshall just didn't care about what he was doing. Which makes sense, Doomsday was a box-office failure, it's only logical that he may not have had the freedom and budget to do what he wanted to this time around. But that sense of a lack of passion for this project shows through the screen, making it near impossible to enjoy beyond seeing a couple heads fly through the air.

FINAL VERDICT: This is something I will probably never watch again. It's mediocre at best, but honestly, you could do a lot worse. I stopped caring about halfway through, which at a little over 90 minutes, is pretty bad. Trying to tell a compelling, epic story in that little time is a hard thing to accomplish. Not impossible, but with most of the screen time devoted to running away and hiding, it leaves little room for things like character development and plot. Neil Marshall has a background in horror films, and his use and style of gore represents that. The gore may be the only thing that sets this apart from any other film in the genre, but that splatter-fest sensibility is dulled by awful CGI blood. I miss the old days of gore. When blood was corn-syrup and red food-coloring, and staging a messy kill took ingenuity and skill. Unfortunately, it's now a lot cheaper to just add the blood splatters in post. Lame.