Reasonably entertaining pseudo-historical actioner but don't expect big battles

Rating: 6/10 (31 August 2013)

I still haven't figured out if I'm a fan of Neil Marshall. I love 'The Descent' and 'Dog Soldiers' to bits, but neither 'Doomsday' or 'Centurion' really hit the mark for me. Neither of them were *bad* but neither really got far above average either.
The first thing mention is that if you're looking for big battles involving hundreds of extras or thousands of CGI characters, look elsewhere. One might expect that a film specifically about the loss of the mythical Roman ninth legion to the warrior tribes of Scotland would involve some kind of grand scale clash, but there's no such thing offered here. Centurion is about a handful of survivors from the legion fleeing across the bleak highland mountains while group of vengeful Picts pursues them and picks them off one by one. At it's core it's very similar to a backwoods slasher type flick such as Wrong Turn or Deliverance.
It's an entertaining enough scenario though, and Michael Fassbender and Olga Kurylenko put in fine performances as the principle adversaries. The films moves along at a good old click and there's not much time to get bored.
There are two things that Centurion does in droves, though, that I personally don't enjoy. The first is the use of a 45 degree shutter angle during every action scene to give it that 'hyper kinetic' look that Spielberg introduced us to in Saving Private Ryan (where it worked) and Ridley Scott followed up with in Gladiator (where it barely worked). But Marshall, as talented as he is, is no Spielberg or Scott, and the hyper kinetics in Centurion yanked me out of the movie every time an action scene began. It's a big shame because otherwise the action was pretty well choreographed and satisfyingly violent.
The second thing I don't like (and there is NO movie where this technique works) is CGI bloodletting. Centurion strives to go one step further than, say, Braveheart in the brutality of its combat. Limbs and heads go flying left right and center. It's perhaps not quite as over the top as "Ironclad" but it's close. The dude in me likes this of course, but give me blood bags and prosthetics any day. The CGI blood and dismemberment of Centurion seemed simply unrealistic and distracting.
Despite these two pet peeves of mine, Centurion is still a silly, fun flick that unashamedly eschews historical accuracy in favor of good old action entertainment. It could have been much, much better though - with a bit of a screenplay polish and more careful directing choices - so I can't in good conscience give it much more than a 6/10.