God historical war action, but with a disturbing flaw

Rating: 6/10 (11 December 2010)

Recap: Centurion Dias is one of the Roman officers at a camp recently overrun by Pict raiders. Taken prisoner, he is brought before Gorlacon, the king of the Picts. However, he manages to escape and return to Roman lines just in time to join the ninth legion on their march to conquer the Picts. However, the legion is wiped out by a Pict attack, and Dias and a few friends find themselves lost far behind enemy lines and hunted by the best there is.
Comments: A rather good movie, far more closer to the genre action than drama. It is tricky to do good historical war movies, but Centurion manages fairly well. My only real concern is that the quality and the unfortunate overuse of blood and gore is not up to the standard that the rest of the movie has. Really a minor part of the movie, but it really stands out and bugs me. It seems that they ran out of budget and had to cut corners somewhere, unfortunately they chose something that they want to show in almost every action scene. For me it really brought the movie down a notch.
Otherwise it is pretty good, even though the story wasn't the best, but good enough, but it got a little repetitive in the end. The soldiers ran, and the Picts hunted, that's about it. But for the 90 minutes it ran, it did work out OK.
6/10