Another corner of the Roman world brought vividly to life.

Rating: 10/10 (5 May 2013)

I'm really taken by this film, and recommend it most highly as a gripping evocation of military honour, administrative mendacity, and brutality on the cold northern frontier of the Roman Empire in second- century AD Britain. Neil Marshall directs a cast of wonderfully skilled actors to create the Roman military force, its territorial governor, and the Pict tribe whose territory was overrun by the Romans after Caesar's invasion.
The threads of bureaucratic necessity and military tension in this "***hole of the world" are set powerfully against the Picts' hatred of the conquerors who took their lands, killed their families, and drove them north into the wilds of what is now Scotland.
At the centre of this story is Quintas Dias, the Roman officer who comes to be in the Ninth Legion when it meets its fate on a forest track Michael Fassbender gives a perfectly-sustained performance as the soldier who realises that his task is to locate and rescue the Legion's commanding officer (Dominic West) and then to lead the small band of survivors back to Roman-held territory. The Roman's grudging admiration for the skill and tenacity of his opponents is made more complex by his discovery that the Empire he's sworn to defend is quite capable of betraying its soldiers' loyalty in the name of political expedience. Quintus Dias's final choice will be understood by any viewer who's had to ask where his or her loyalty, and sense of home, truly lies.
The magnificently-filmed landscape of Scotland is a perfect, evocative setting for the military encampments of Picts and Romans, and the journeys of escape and pursuit which criss-cross its northern territory. And the cast's discipline in dealing with the snow, wind, and icy waters, make their quests vivid and tense. Several performances stand out - Fassbinder and West as totally-focused military commanders, David Morrissey and Liam Cunningham as centurions for whom the soldier's life is the only reality, Paul Freeman as a self-serving territorial Governor who longs for Rome, and JJ Feild as a soldier whose calculated self- centredness jeopardizes his own comrades. Ulrich Thomsen, the celtic king Gorlacon, and Olga Kurylenko, the tracker Etain, shine as Picts whose hatred of Rome is relentless, and wholly understandable. I give a salute also to Imogen Poots, who plays the celtic necromancer Arianne with warmth, yearning, and strength - a necessary counterpoint to Kurylenko's demonic intensity. Anyone who values the power and craft of Gladiator will be glad to see Centurion - another journey into the world of Empire which makes clear, in very contemporary ways, the ambiguity of the conqueror's role, and the reasons explaining the hatred felt by those who've been conquered. Well done, Neil Marshall.