Men on the Run

Rating: 5/10 (5 January 2012)

It is strange how two otherwise unrelated films on the same topic can sometimes suddenly appear within a short time of one another. In 1960, for example, there were two filmed biographies of Oscar Wilde, a writer whose life had never previously been the subject of a film, and in the early seventies two separate studios were, quite by chance, working on disaster movies about skyscrapers on fire. When they discovered the coincidence they decided to join forces and produce the film now known as "The Towering Inferno". More recently, 2009 saw two French biopics of the fashion designer Coco Chanel, "Coco Chanel et Igor Stravinsky" and "Coco avant Chanel".
"Centurion" is another example of the same phenomenon. It was one of two films from 2010/2011 about the massacre of the Ninth Legion in the early part of the second century AD, the other being "The Eagle". Historians of the Roman period are divided about the exact fate of this legion, but both films explore the theory that it was destroyed in battle with the Picts, the inhabitants of what was then known as Caledonia and today as the Scottish Highlands.
The film is ostensibly set in AD 117, but there are several historical inaccuracies. The Roman governor of Britannia is named as "Agricola"; there were two British governors of this name but the first, the famous Gnaeus Julius Agricola, had died in AD 93, and the second, Sextus Calpurnius Agricola, would not become governor until nearly fifty years after the events depicted here. The film also refers to Hadrian's Wall although construction of the wall did not begin until AD 122.
Agricola fears that the warlike Picts are becoming a threat to the peace and stability of Britannia, so he sends the Ninth Legion under their commander Titus Flavius Virilus to subdue them. (The commander's cognomen is spelt as "Virilus" in the cast list, although the correct spelling should probably be "Virilis", meaning "manly"). The Romans, however, are ambushed by the Picts; Virilus is captured and most of his soldiers killed. The film follows the adventures of a small group of survivors, including the title character Centurion Quintus Dias, as they attempt to make their way to safety through hostile territory.
Neither "Centurion" nor "The Eagle" bears much resemblance to traditional Roman films like "Ben-Hur" or "Spartacus", or even modern ones like "Gladiator". They were made on a much lower budget, and on a much smaller scale than those grand epics. They do not deal with Kings and Emperors or with great, world-shattering events but rather with the lives of relatively humble individuals caught up in desperate power-struggles. Yet despite these resemblances there are also many differences between the two films.
An important element in "The Eagle" is the close friendship which develops between the retired Roman officer Aquila and his British slave Esca, and the two, very different, men are well characterised by Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell. The characterisation in "Centurion" is much more perfunctory; neither Quintus not any of his companions emerge as rounded characters. The one memorable character is the mute British woman Etain who acts as the Legion's guide but who betrays them to the Picts. (Was, I wonder, Etain originally intended to be mute, or was this detail added at a later stage to disguise Olga Kurylenko's foreign accent?) Etain, however, is at the centre of the film's biggest plot hole. We learn that she is mute because the Romans, who have also murdered the rest of her family, have cut out her tongue, but it is never explained why Agricola and Virilus are so stupid as to entrust the safety of the Legion to a woman with such excellent reasons to hate the Roman empire and all it stands for.
I must admit that I found "The Eagle", which is more than just an action-adventure, by far the better of the two films. It asks some pertinent questions about such concepts as imperialism, honour, freedom and friendship and about respect for alien cultures. "Centurion", by contrast, is a simple action thriller which avoids asking questions about deeper issues. The Roman occupation of Britain is simply used as the exotic backdrop to a basic men-on-the-run thriller plot which could equally well have been made about soldiers from any other war in history or, with a modern setting, about escaping prisoners or about a group of friends who have fallen foul of a gang of criminals. In "Apocalypto", Mel Gibson was able to endow a similar "chase" thriller in an exotic setting with a certain freshness and originality; Neil Marshall, unfortunately, is unable to perform the same service for "Centurion". 5/10