First things first, this is not a film you want to take your wife/girlfriend/that-girl-you-like-from-the-coffee-shop to the cinema to see. If you have bought tickets for such a purpose, cancel them. Now. Otherwise that girl you like will become ‘the-one-you-once-liked-before-she-thought-you-were-wrong-in-the-head’. Got it? Alright, let’s proceed.
Directed by Neil Marshall, Centurion is a historical thriller set in AD 117 during the Roman occupation of Britain. The Empire is facing resistance from a Celtic tribe known as the Picts, who repel any attempt to invade Caledonia (Scotland). The current governor of Britain, Agricolas (Paul Freeman), decides to dispatch the elite Ninth Legion, led by General Titus Flavius Virilus (Dominic West), to wipe them out once and for all. Joining the Ninth is centurion Quintus Dias (Michael Fassbender), a former captive of the tribe, and Pict-raised scout Etain (Olga Kurylenko). Once they head north however, things go awry.
If the heady Latin names and period setting mean you are expecting sword-and-sandals gravitas along the lines of Gladiator or Spartacus, you’re in for a shock. This is not Oscar-baiting epic material.
Director Marshall definitely does not abide by the philosophy ‘less-is-more’. His is a Grand Guignol outlook, based on questions like ‘Why throw a pint of blood into a scene when you can throw twenty gallons?’ or ‘Why have a run-of-the-mill decapitation when there are plenty of other limbs to be severed, veins to be opened and throats to be slit?’. Battles were a brutal thing and this shouldn’t be skated over, but where other filmmakers may portray the odd one or two graphic slayings to set the tone, he shoves every detail of each into your face. Again and again. And again. And again. And… well you get the idea. We should expect this from the man who brought us the anarchy-fest that was Doomsday, but this time he has clearly decided that loosely basing your film on historical events means you can get away with murder. Several hundred times.
Visceral violence isn’t a problem if the rest of the picture stands up, but it doesn’t. The tone shifts constantly in the dialogue. One minute we are treated to prose that tries to emulate classics like those mentioned above, the next it’s talk you would hear during a drinking session in the pub. The result is that the film sits uneasy.
It’s a shame, as underneath there is a rather decent movie wanting to get out. Had Marshall stuck more strongly with the irreverence, we could have been looking at a hoot close to his cult debut Dog Soldiers, which could have worked well as a two-fingered salute to the epics. Or if he’d dialed-down slightly, it might have been a thriller to rival his sophomore effort The Descent. Unfortunately it flirts with both but doesn’t reach either.
In the pro column Centurion does use it’s £10million budget well, the C-minus opening credit graphics aside. The scenery is spectacular, and Marshall embraces it. Shot entirely within Britain, the terrain is at one point vastly beautiful, the next inhospitable and imposing. It is surely what J.R.R. Tolkien had in mind when creating Middle-Earth. Another plus is that the battle set-pieces are crisp and punchy as well as being frenetic.
Of whatever performances you can find amidst the carnage, Michael Fassbender carries the film but is let down by the script and Dominic West is charismatic though underused as the King Leonidas-light general whose men would readily die to protect. The rest of the cast do what they can but are generally wasted in characters which are faint echoes of others you’ve seen in similar material.
Marshall currently has several projects planned. He will need to reign it in and regain his focus if he’s going to deliver on his early promise.
5 out of 10 (deduct 2 points if you can’t stomach gore)
What did you make of Centurion?