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So hey! Centurion! Let's talk about that.
Okay, upfront: I fucking love Neil Marshall. There are exactly three directors for whom I will see whatever they make, and it's Neil Marshall, Danny Boyle, and Vincenzo Natali. Marshall has made four movies to date: Dog Soldiers (British military guys on training exercises in Scotland over the weekend run afoul of werewolves), The Descent (women cavers vs. cave mutants, and possibly one of the best "ladies are awesome" horror movies - or movies in general - of the last ten years), Doomsday (BATSHIT INSANE AND FUCKING AWESOME), and Centurion, which can be described as "The Eagle, but gorier and less gay". Which--kind of, yeah.
Seriously. You could do worse than to get this and The Eagle and make a really weirdly specific double feature out of it.
ANYWAY. The Ninth Legion, led by Virilus (Dominic West), is dispatched to find and kill Gorlacon, the leader of the Picts. Along the way, they discover Quintus Dias (Michael Fassbender), the last survivor of a Roman frontier outpost, and are betrayed into a trap by Etain (Olga Kuryenko), their mute Pict scout. (I know! I was surprised too.) (No I wasn't.) Quintus and the survivors of the Ninth - all, like, seven of them - have to try and evade Etain and the Picts long enough to get back behind Roman lines. Three guesses how that goes.
I'm not gonna sit here and say that there are just Boy Movies and Girl Movies, because that is ridiculous. There are, however, certain movies that break down into Boy or Girl, and this is one of them, and it happens to be Boy. Centurion is Neil Marshall's Boy Movie, possibly to balance out his version of a Girl Movie, The Descent--which, if it's a Girl Movie, is a fucking great one, because there are no men of any particular note and women fight off horrible monsters with caving equipment and do not show their tits. I approve of both of those things.
It is also--fair warning--bloody, violent, and dirty. Do you not like gratuitous wounds, limb amputations, or horrible wounds? Then you should maybe not watch this. (There's one thing in particular that could be triggering or just - turn you off the movie, but I mention it below.) It is also landscape porn, because holy shit Neil Marshall can shoot a movie. I do not even care that the last shot of the film is improbable in that I am not sure the U.K. in 117 A.D. had what look like cherry blossom trees! Because it is lovely! And has been my desktop wallpaper on occasion!
OTHER THINGS OF NOTE:
* ETAIN. Etain is amazing. It--okay, the fact that it's the whole "the woman's family was raped and murdered, and she was raped and had her tongue cut out" backstory is awful, but it's not presented as anything but awful: Gorlacon tells Virilus to explain why she betrayed him and the Ninth, but it's not an excuse. She is, in fact, one of the two most badass people in the movie (along with Quintus, obviously): she can track anything any distance, she will murder you if you look at her funny, and she--seriously, it's like they hired a wolf that happens to look like a woman who was once in a James Bond movie. It is amazing. You could do worse than to wrap yourself in fake wolf skins and put blue paint on your face for homemade woad and go as Etain to Comic Con, is what I'm saying.
* No one's a good guy. The Picts are hunting down our heroes, yeah, and when they find them they are swift and terrible, but they're only doing it because one of them murdered Gorlacon's son. And not his grown son, either; the kid was, like, eight. And the Romans are basically face-saving assholes who will totally bail on you if it gives them a good press release. Which...makes the end of the movie really satisfying for me, actually.
* Half the guys in this movie end up wounded and shirtless, but at no point are any of the women anything but fully clothed. Fully clothed and killing people, no less.
* One of the most badass guys in the movie is a chef. That is delightful.
* ARIANNE. Arianne is--okay, whatever, Arianne is awesome. She lives by herself on the outskirts of Pict territory because Gorlacon accused her of witchcraft and exiled her (and scarred her face as a mark of her exile), and she ends up giving Quintus and the remaining Romans (not a lot of 'em, by that point) shelter and food for a couple of days. She mocks Etain to her face (and almost gets murdered, 'til the leader of the hunting party is all "pssst: Etain, no, do you want to get cursed? Are you high?" and Etain backs off) and defies a pack of angry Picts--her own people, mind you, before they exiled her--and doesn't so much as blink. We don't ever see her use a weapon, but still: badass.
Aaaaaaaaand that's when the Boy Movie becomes a Chick Movie for approximately one act, and I do not even care, because LET'S TALK ABOUT QUINTUS AND ARIANNE WHY DON'T WE, THANK YOU I THINK I SHALL.
* NOW IS THE PART WHERE I TALK ABOUT A HET COUPLE AND ~FEELINGS, SO YOU CAN SKIP THIS IF YOU WANT. Because, okay, Arianne is alone; she's been exiled from her own people for witchery (though basically, she's like the village herb woman or whatever, and maybe 25), and lives just outside of Pict territory. She keeps away from the occasional band of Romans by letting them think she's a necromancer and stays to herself, though because they keep traveling nearby she's managed to learn their language. She lets Quintus and his men stay with her, hiding them away when Etain's hunting party comes through, and keeps them warm and fed, helps heal the (fairly serious) wound one of them has. She's kind to them, and gentle, but you don't get the sense she's mealy-mouthed or simpering; far from it. She mocks Etain to her face and chides Quintus for pissing on his breakfast, and looks betrayed and absolutely furious when she talks about how she was exiled by Gorlacon. She's kind by nature (and possibly her profession), but she's not weak.
Quintus, on the other hand, is the quintessential Roman soldier: all he wants to do is get his men (what's left of them) home. He seems bound up in the idea of Rome being all-powerful, not that that's surprising, and when he discovers Rome wants to kill him so the story of the Ninth Legion can become a legend to inspire the people, he's just as betrayed as Arianne was when she told him about being exiled by Gorlacon. He goes out of his way to keep from frightening her when she returns to her home and finds him and his men there; she, in turns, goes out of her way to keep them alive.
Seriously, Fassbender and Imogen Poots sell this shit so hard I'd buy a house from them. It's not overtly romantic--there's no actual kissing 'til the end, and they hardly even touch--but they're...okay, have you seen Fassbender in Jane Eyre? You know that thing he does like every two minutes with Mia Wasikowska, where the smoulder is almost audible? Yeah, he does that here too. And Poots is great: she's in about twenty minutes of movie all told, but she cycles through cautious, gentle, mildly flirty, bitter, angry, tired, and hopeful without missing a beat or being overly purple. Possibly I want to write het for this movie? But I have, like, just over two months to finish a goddamned XMFC series and do a bunch of TVD pimp posts, so I promise nothing.
(YOU GUYS SERIOUSLY IT IS WORTH IT FOR HIM CARVING HER A WOODEN HORSE.)
* In addition to Fassbender, Kuryenko and Poots, Dominic West (with a beard!) does a great job as Virilus, the general of the Ninth Legion; he's in about a third of the movie, but you know exactly who that guy is in the opening scene, where we learn you should maybe not be a dick to your commanding officer when he beats you at drunken arm-wrestling. Liam Cunningham and Noel Clarke (Mickey Smith!) are in this too, and just as good, though Clarke isn't in it as much as I would have liked, and--seriously, I keep seeing Liam Cunningham in shit. Like, recently. It's starting to weird me out.
But--yeah, if you can handle violence and (not gratuitous) gore, and the Etain's-backstory thing, you could do a lot worse than Centurion.
Okay, upfront: I fucking love Neil Marshall. There are exactly three directors for whom I will see whatever they make, and it's Neil Marshall, Danny Boyle, and Vincenzo Natali. Marshall has made four movies to date: Dog Soldiers (British military guys on training exercises in Scotland over the weekend run afoul of werewolves), The Descent (women cavers vs. cave mutants, and possibly one of the best "ladies are awesome" horror movies - or movies in general - of the last ten years), Doomsday (BATSHIT INSANE AND FUCKING AWESOME), and Centurion, which can be described as "The Eagle, but gorier and less gay". Which--kind of, yeah.
Seriously. You could do worse than to get this and The Eagle and make a really weirdly specific double feature out of it.
ANYWAY. The Ninth Legion, led by Virilus (Dominic West), is dispatched to find and kill Gorlacon, the leader of the Picts. Along the way, they discover Quintus Dias (Michael Fassbender), the last survivor of a Roman frontier outpost, and are betrayed into a trap by Etain (Olga Kuryenko), their mute Pict scout. (I know! I was surprised too.) (No I wasn't.) Quintus and the survivors of the Ninth - all, like, seven of them - have to try and evade Etain and the Picts long enough to get back behind Roman lines. Three guesses how that goes.
I'm not gonna sit here and say that there are just Boy Movies and Girl Movies, because that is ridiculous. There are, however, certain movies that break down into Boy or Girl, and this is one of them, and it happens to be Boy. Centurion is Neil Marshall's Boy Movie, possibly to balance out his version of a Girl Movie, The Descent--which, if it's a Girl Movie, is a fucking great one, because there are no men of any particular note and women fight off horrible monsters with caving equipment and do not show their tits. I approve of both of those things.
It is also--fair warning--bloody, violent, and dirty. Do you not like gratuitous wounds, limb amputations, or horrible wounds? Then you should maybe not watch this. (There's one thing in particular that could be triggering or just - turn you off the movie, but I mention it below.) It is also landscape porn, because holy shit Neil Marshall can shoot a movie. I do not even care that the last shot of the film is improbable in that I am not sure the U.K. in 117 A.D. had what look like cherry blossom trees! Because it is lovely! And has been my desktop wallpaper on occasion!
OTHER THINGS OF NOTE:
* ETAIN. Etain is amazing. It--okay, the fact that it's the whole "the woman's family was raped and murdered, and she was raped and had her tongue cut out" backstory is awful, but it's not presented as anything but awful: Gorlacon tells Virilus to explain why she betrayed him and the Ninth, but it's not an excuse. She is, in fact, one of the two most badass people in the movie (along with Quintus, obviously): she can track anything any distance, she will murder you if you look at her funny, and she--seriously, it's like they hired a wolf that happens to look like a woman who was once in a James Bond movie. It is amazing. You could do worse than to wrap yourself in fake wolf skins and put blue paint on your face for homemade woad and go as Etain to Comic Con, is what I'm saying.
* No one's a good guy. The Picts are hunting down our heroes, yeah, and when they find them they are swift and terrible, but they're only doing it because one of them murdered Gorlacon's son. And not his grown son, either; the kid was, like, eight. And the Romans are basically face-saving assholes who will totally bail on you if it gives them a good press release. Which...makes the end of the movie really satisfying for me, actually.
* Half the guys in this movie end up wounded and shirtless, but at no point are any of the women anything but fully clothed. Fully clothed and killing people, no less.
* One of the most badass guys in the movie is a chef. That is delightful.
* ARIANNE. Arianne is--okay, whatever, Arianne is awesome. She lives by herself on the outskirts of Pict territory because Gorlacon accused her of witchcraft and exiled her (and scarred her face as a mark of her exile), and she ends up giving Quintus and the remaining Romans (not a lot of 'em, by that point) shelter and food for a couple of days. She mocks Etain to her face (and almost gets murdered, 'til the leader of the hunting party is all "pssst: Etain, no, do you want to get cursed? Are you high?" and Etain backs off) and defies a pack of angry Picts--her own people, mind you, before they exiled her--and doesn't so much as blink. We don't ever see her use a weapon, but still: badass.
Aaaaaaaaand that's when the Boy Movie becomes a Chick Movie for approximately one act, and I do not even care, because LET'S TALK ABOUT QUINTUS AND ARIANNE WHY DON'T WE, THANK YOU I THINK I SHALL.
* NOW IS THE PART WHERE I TALK ABOUT A HET COUPLE AND ~FEELINGS, SO YOU CAN SKIP THIS IF YOU WANT. Because, okay, Arianne is alone; she's been exiled from her own people for witchery (though basically, she's like the village herb woman or whatever, and maybe 25), and lives just outside of Pict territory. She keeps away from the occasional band of Romans by letting them think she's a necromancer and stays to herself, though because they keep traveling nearby she's managed to learn their language. She lets Quintus and his men stay with her, hiding them away when Etain's hunting party comes through, and keeps them warm and fed, helps heal the (fairly serious) wound one of them has. She's kind to them, and gentle, but you don't get the sense she's mealy-mouthed or simpering; far from it. She mocks Etain to her face and chides Quintus for pissing on his breakfast, and looks betrayed and absolutely furious when she talks about how she was exiled by Gorlacon. She's kind by nature (and possibly her profession), but she's not weak.
Quintus, on the other hand, is the quintessential Roman soldier: all he wants to do is get his men (what's left of them) home. He seems bound up in the idea of Rome being all-powerful, not that that's surprising, and when he discovers Rome wants to kill him so the story of the Ninth Legion can become a legend to inspire the people, he's just as betrayed as Arianne was when she told him about being exiled by Gorlacon. He goes out of his way to keep from frightening her when she returns to her home and finds him and his men there; she, in turns, goes out of her way to keep them alive.
Seriously, Fassbender and Imogen Poots sell this shit so hard I'd buy a house from them. It's not overtly romantic--there's no actual kissing 'til the end, and they hardly even touch--but they're...okay, have you seen Fassbender in Jane Eyre? You know that thing he does like every two minutes with Mia Wasikowska, where the smoulder is almost audible? Yeah, he does that here too. And Poots is great: she's in about twenty minutes of movie all told, but she cycles through cautious, gentle, mildly flirty, bitter, angry, tired, and hopeful without missing a beat or being overly purple. Possibly I want to write het for this movie? But I have, like, just over two months to finish a goddamned XMFC series and do a bunch of TVD pimp posts, so I promise nothing.
(YOU GUYS SERIOUSLY IT IS WORTH IT FOR HIM CARVING HER A WOODEN HORSE.)
* In addition to Fassbender, Kuryenko and Poots, Dominic West (with a beard!) does a great job as Virilus, the general of the Ninth Legion; he's in about a third of the movie, but you know exactly who that guy is in the opening scene, where we learn you should maybe not be a dick to your commanding officer when he beats you at drunken arm-wrestling. Liam Cunningham and Noel Clarke (Mickey Smith!) are in this too, and just as good, though Clarke isn't in it as much as I would have liked, and--seriously, I keep seeing Liam Cunningham in shit. Like, recently. It's starting to weird me out.
But--yeah, if you can handle violence and (not gratuitous) gore, and the Etain's-backstory thing, you could do a lot worse than Centurion.
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