Nothing extraordinary but enjoyable adventure film

Rating: 7/10 (27 August 2011)

Acceptable adventure film of the sword and sandals genre, set in Roman Britain, has some Roman soldiers, survivors from a massacre against the bloody Pict tribes, fleeing behind enemy lines. Historically dubious (the ragtag platoon includes, seemingly for PC reasons and ludicrously from a historical point of view, a black roman soldier), this violent and bloody, muscular and masculine film is, for all its flaws, certainly entertaining. I found this better and more enjoyable than the recent, similarly themed Eagle of the Ninth. The pristine, misty Scottish outdoors where this movie was filmed certainly helps. Acting is not the main point of this movie, as the actors have to put up with some terse, rough lines. Michael Fassbender, who was fine in the more recent X-Men film, fails to make much of an impression here as the top Roman soldier here, but Ukrainian model Olga Kurylenko, is surprisingly OK as the top warrioress of the Picts.