Centurion (2010)

Director: Neil Marshall

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Dominic West, Andreas Wisniewski, Dave Legeno, Axelle Carolyn

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Fight or die.

Plot: In 2nd-century Britain, Roman fighter Quintas Dias (Michael Fassbender) is the lone survivor of a Pictish attack on a Roman frontier post. Eager for revenge, he joins the Ninth Legion -- under General Virilus (Dominic West) -- and journeys north on a mission to destroy the Picts.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again? Noop.

SPOILERS APLENTY!!!!!!!!

Ugh. I hadn't seen so much as a trailer for this. All I knew was it was about Roman soldiers behind enemy lines in Ireland or something and it's got Michael Fassbender in it, a cat I really dig. If it hadn't been for a few very poor cliche's, I'd be in better spirits about it and would consider giving it another go sometime.


The performances are fine along with just about everything else except for some liberties the story takes. For example...Etain (Olga Kurylenko) is a super-tracking killer extraordinaire. The only reason she existed, it felt, was to bring in the female audience. She's over the top and silly. Just look at her in her getup.

Whatever.

I do appreciate, though, how her character's story is resolved. Then there's the other girl, Aeron (Axelle Carolyn). She's the love interest of our hero, Quintus Dias (Fassbender). She's actually A-OK in my book except for how her character's story is resolved. More on that later.


I'm diggin' Fassbender with every new film of his I see. And Dominic West needs to have his own movie as the Roman general. He was fantastic and gave the most enthusiastic performance in the picture.


CENTURION suffers from quickly edited fight scenes but it's not nearly as bad is it usually is these days. It also has a character (I forget his name) who kills a child in order save the rest of his surviving Roman buddies (there's six in total including the one they came to rescue). Must they really make him into the one guy of their lot to be a bad person? They really went out of their way to do it, too. The only reason they did that was so that the film makers would have more than enough reason to have him killed off. Why? Well because he killed a kid and he can't be allowed to live. BULLSHIT! He killed that kid before he could scream and send the enemy down on them (they were in the enemy's camp, you see), which would mean all of their deaths. We'd have a short-ass movie if that happened. Shit like this really pisses me off.


Then there's the ending where Quintas makes it back to the Roman HQ. He's the sole survivor of the 9th Legion and the leader and his wife think it would be best to kill him so that no one could know that the enemy slaughtered their top legion thereby causing a serious decrease in morale. OK, I'm down with that. I don't want to see Quintas die but maybe someone will step in and do something noble. Nope. They go to kill him and he gets the upper hand. After the deed, he's alone in the room with the leader's wife who asks him, "Where will you go?". He responds with, "Where I belong." and then bitch slaps her. For fuck's sake, really? This is Hollywood Bullshit 101 screenwriting and it stinks. Then Quintas goes back to that broad that lives in the woods and they lived happily ever after. I did rather enjoy the bitch slap.


So you might get the idea that I didn't like this picture. I did, but there are little bits and pieces that just cheese me off to no end that set my eyes to rolling. It also doesn't help that the last half hour of its 97 minutes lasts forever. I just can't take that kind of abuse which sucks because I'll watch ANY movie about ancient Rome...but that doesn't necessarily mean I'll watch it a second time.