Terrible, terrible film

Rating: 1/10 (31 March 2010)

The Last Legion Spoiler warning, The Last legion is set at the fall of the roman empire and follows the last emperors struggle for survival as he escapes his foes and is finally forced to Britannia (Briton) where he recruits the help of former Roman soldiers.
I was dubious with this film when I noticed Colin Firth not only present in an action period drama, but starring as one of the main fighters in it. I would not need to tell anyone with the faintest knowledge of films that he is not cut out for such a role. He is a posh, pompous upper class, British of British man. He is dubbed the thinking women's pin up. With this suit wearing ball attending intellectual demeanor, is he really suited in a bloody, gruesome highly action based film, cast as a sword expert, master tactician and rough and ready soldier no less. The short answer is no, he does not suit the role one bit. I might have been more inclined to change my view on him had his career not deviated so drastically from such a role. This all being said, his character was perhaps the strongest (in terms of quality, depth and believable acting) out of the whole casting on the film that was littered with potholes, terrible acting, poor effects and ridiculous clichés. What clichés I hear you ask? Well for starters the age old idea that the good guys can quite easily kill around twenty enemies with little effort, even though the enemy has probably had just as much experience fighting as they have. But the main clichés, the thing that really pisses me off is when they cast a bloody woman as an Amazon style one woman army who shows up the men. Now I know that I am going to be slated and called all sorts of sexist names for saying this but it is near impossible that a women could ever accomplish that! There are a number of reasons why, for starters this incredible ability to kill dozens of other people with apparent ease is a gift not even Bruce Lee could hone so effectively, secondly just think how historically inaccurate it is. Women were not trained to fight, if they were then it was in self defense and a rarity. Even if a women was trained as a warrior then no one would hire her to fight for them, not just because women were not taken seriously in that way but also just think of the humiliation a senator or noble would face if they needed a women to do their fighting. My final point for the dislike of the clichés and the most sexist is that women are weaker physically, they are smaller and will almost certainly be slower than a man when wielding any kind of strong weapon such as a sword. And lets not forget the knockers, they can disadvantage women when fighting or even firing a bow at times. The portrayal of them being as strong and in many ways better than men as warriors is ludicrous. Now for the potholes, to start off with the film makes sense, it explains the situation and the fall of the roman world, the storyline makes sense right up until they free the emperor from his prison, a couple of things such as the druid dude randomly walking into the Gauls throne room struck me as a little odd but I could still get what was going on. Where it began to lose itself was afterwards, I understood that the east half of the empire had given into the enemy and so was no longer a safe haven and I sort of understood the idea of heading to Britain as it was the last place that might have had an army. But how did they manage to get there if everyone was so eager to destroy them? How did everyone know where they were headed, and what is more, how did they find them afterwards as Britain was one giant forest? It made no sense. Then, when they did find them, why did they fight, why did the townspeople defend an emperor or an empire that had firstly abandoned them and secondly brought an army down on them? The fight at the end was stupid too, they claimed they were fighting for freedom. How and on what grounds? How did the young dictator represent freedom, "hmm a hereditary monarch yes that sounds like liberty and power of the people." Oh and a final point that annoyed me, the black dude and the younger white dude arm wrestling, like the skinny (by comparison) white guy could fair against a guy with biceps the size of his head. In conclusion I think it was a shocking film.