Another entertaining effort from ever reliable Neil Marshall.

Rating: 7/10 (22 March 2012)

The director continues his successful string of titles - "Dog Soldiers", "The Descent", and "Doomsday" - with this stylish take on an old myth. Michael Fassbender, engaging as always, plays Quintus, a centurion with the Roman Army in 117 A.D. who survives an attack on his fort and subsequently takes part in a mission to eliminate the savage warriors known as the Picts. However, the troops get overwhelmed in unfamiliar territory, and Quintus and a select few others make it out alive, intent on rescuing their general (Dominic West) who was captured by the enemy. What Marshall does here is just dive head first into the action, getting any exposition out of the way as quickly as possible, easing us into more character oriented scenes as the story progresses. And the characters are a solidly entertaining bunch, with the effective twist that one of the main antagonists here is a female, the animal like warrior Etain, played by model / actress Olga Kurylenko, who's quite good in the part. The scenery is extremely breathtaking, with superb widescreen photography, and a colour style that mostly avoids brighter colours. This creates a wonderful visual contrast when the Roman troops are besieged by fireballs; the yellow & orange looks great amid the muted blues & greys, etc. The action is respectably intense, with a lot of digital blood spilled as various combatants brutalize each other. Fassbender is well supported by a cast including JJ Feild, David Morrissey, Liam Cunningham, and Noel Clarke as his comrades, as well as the lovely and appealing Imogen Poots as Arianne, ostracized from her fellow Picts, Ulrich Thomsen as Pict leader Gorlacon, and veterans Paul Freeman ("Raiders of the Lost Ark") as Governor Agricola, Andreas Wisniewski ("The Living Daylights", "Die Hard") as Commander Gratus, and Michael Carter ("An American Werewolf in London", "Return of the Jedi") as General Antoninus. The story here is pretty simple, but efficiently told and the movie does illustrate some of the horrors of war and fleshes out its characters as much as it can while still maintaining its basic visceral appeal. And the fact that it's inspired by history, when the 9th Legion of the Roman Army vanished in Hibernia, is intriguing and may make a viewer want to do a bit of reading on the subject. Overall, it shows once again Marshall's ability to craft good crowd pleasing diversions with a nice amount of pizazz. Seven out of 10.