Centurion - 2010

Neil Marhsall is a filmmaker who as garnered my interest and I constantly look forward to his latest film. This opinion comes from both Dog Soldiers, an excellent British Werewolf horror with great wit and humour, and the The Descent, arguably the best horror film of the past decade, and an incredibly terrifying yet character driven film. His third film, which I've yet to see, Doomsday, wasn't well recieved and followed a similar model of putting a small band of characters in an inhospitable scenario and then slowly killing them off. Centurion, his latest effort follows the same tried and tested path.
The film begins with Michael Fassbinder's Quintus Dias, Roman Centurion and son of a Gladiator, as he flees from captitvity at the hands of the ruthless Picts. Following his escape he is teamed up with the Ninth Legion of Rome in Britain as ther make ready their invasion of the Pict territory in Scotland. What follows is the decimation of the Legion at the hands of the Picts and the attempt of the few remaining survivors to get back to Roman occupied land before a Pict search party can hunt them down and murder them all.
One of the principal problems I felt in this film was just how low budget it felt. Unlike say Gladiator, or any number of Roman set epics, this film felt small, and suffered for it. The initial battle between the Picts and the Roman's feels tiny in comparison to say the opening battle of Gladiator. The "Legion" representing nothing more than about 100 hundred men.
Thankfully though, the film really kicks into gear and the adrenalin got pumping when the band of survivors set out on their mission to first, rescue the General and then flee to the safety of Britain. It's here that Marshall, from the experience gained in his previous work, really begins to express himself as Fassbinder and a band of recognisable British faces (David Morrissey, Noel Clarke, Riz Ahmed and Liam Cunningham who seems to be in everything these days) and a few others. The film resembled Dog Soldiers on the run, but with less wry wit and poorer action sequences.
The main problem for me though was in the lack of a real theme. A minor subplot involving a witch (yes!) felt contrived and set up to provide an ending which was predictable, telegraphed and disappointing. The other problem was that the Roman's were made out to be the bad guys invading the Picts land and so I was never really sure who to root for. Add to that the Picts being depicted as a bunch of super human native killers which fell the wrong side of cliche and the film seemed to enjoy seeing the Roman's defeated by the Picts, whilst also asking us to root for the few surviving Romans.
Despite all the flaws when Marshall lets rip with fake blood and big weapons you'll find few complaints from me. It's just a shame the story and characters weren't as rich as those in Dog Soldiers or The Descent.