Centurion
15, Nationwide
You know how it is. There are two sword-and-sandal films opening in cinemas, and you just can’t decide which one to see. Will it be Alejandro Amenábar’s Agora, which looks poised, if a little sterile? Or will it be Neil Marshall’s Centurion, which is all about the action, action, action? So you do as I did, and reach for a coin in your pocket. Heads, it’s Agora; tails, Centurion. You throw. The coin somersaults in the air, plunges back towards your hand, and…
Centurion is Marshall’s fourth feature, and it remains faithful to the horror-cum-comic-book stylings of his previous three. In Dog Soldiers (2002), it was soldiers versus werewolves. In The Descent (2005), it was potholers versus subterranean monsters. In Doomsday (2008), it was soldiers (again) versus dystopian punks. And, here, it’s the Romans versus the Picts. It may not be nuanced storytelling, but don’t necessarily hold that against the films or their creator. At its best, Marshall’s work is reminiscent of the old Hammer classics: unpretentious, colourful and put together with immense care.
Oh, and it’s bloody, too. All of Marshall’s films have crimson tributaries running through them, building up to swollen rivers of gore — and Centurion is no different. This much is clear from the opening battle, in which skulls are smashed, limbs sliced off and blood splashed liberally across the screen. And just in case you missed all that, the next scene introduces one of our heroes — a Roman general played by Dominic West (aka Jimmy McNulty from The Wire) — by having him stick a knife through the arm of a fellow soldier. The reason? Truly, I don’t know. They were having an arm wrestle, and then …well, it’s just that kind of movie.
From there on in, we’re given a rudimentary plot to follow: the general’s legion is massacred behind enemy lines in Scotland, and a small group of survivors has to battle its way back to English soil. They are pursued — naturally — by a group of Picts led by the willowy Etain (Olga Kurylenko). And they are duly picked off, one at a time, by axe, by arrow and by sword. The question: how many will remain at the end?
And that, precisely, is the main problem with Centurion. Marshall has commandeered some superb acting talent to fill the ranks of his muddy Roman band. There’s Michael Fassbender, last seen in Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank (2009). There’s the ever-reliable David Morrissey. And there’s rising star Noel Clarke. But none of their characters has time to develop amid all the constant slicing and dicing, tearing and swearing. Everything is just too kinetic. The action sequences smash into you like a crowbar. And, before you know it, we’re off again with the slash, slash, chop, chop. Forget about the gore, it’s the sheer gratuitousness of proceedings that will leave you reeling.
The actors aren’t helped, either, by some fiercely portentous dialogue. From my notebook, to be read out loud for full effect: ‘What new ordeals does fate yet have in store for us?’; ‘So, you have escaped from the clutches of Gorlacon’; ‘Her soul is an empty vessel which only Roman blood can fill’, and so on. And that’s before we take in a narrative detour which sets up a ten-minute romance between Fassbender and the most radiant, groomed and artfully scarred ‘witch’ in all second-century Britain.
So, by rights, Centurion should be equal parts reprehensible and ludicrous. But it’s hard not to somehow admire what Marshall is trying here. Much as Paul Verhoeven did with Flesh & Blood (1985), he has made a bloody and savage film about a bloody and savage age. He has put coarse language into the mouths of his characters because Roman soldiers were coarse. And he has attempted to convey the horror and swill of battle. Historically accurate? I don’t think so. But it makes a change from softer, if superior, fare like Gladiator (2000). Besides, when Marshall’s camera alights on the craggy, snow-dappled hills of Scotland, Centurion even achieves a raw power to call its own. A pity, then, that he spends quite so much time sifting through entrails.
In the end, it all comes down to grown men and women playing at swordfights. Some will find it childish and shallow. Others will find it compulsive and oddly charming. Much will depend on your frame of mind at the time — or, perhaps, on the toss of a coin.
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