I joke, I joke, when I say Neil Marshall's The Descent is a meditation on how girls can't stop talking (plot-summary: ladies go cave dive and bump into these bat-like monsters; they hear you they kill you; you stay quiet, you live). In actuality it's a pretty gritty rumination on female friendship and loyalty (ha! Female loyalty?). Then me and Maya checked Marshall's Doomsday. I don't remember what the H it was actually about. I do, however, remember that post-apocalyptic 90 minutes was like a 3-liner of coke. Reminded me of Point Break, a continuous series of climaxes (climaces?). Two pretty full films, sharp. So that’s why I'm really disappointed in Marshall’s newest, rather dull work, Centurion.
It's a roman gladiator period piece about a troop fighting against the Celts. Ferris (Dominic West of The Wire) is a Roman General renowned for his savagery and loyalty to his men. Following orders, he marches deep into the Scottish highlands to, I think, win back a Roman outpost. His guide, a mute woman named Etain (Olga Kuylenko), betrays the soldiers and leads them into an ambush. The Romans are decimated except for a half-dozen or so who need to dig deep to keep ahead of the Celts on their trail and make it cross-country and back home.
Seemingly, the point of this film is to showcase a set of battle set pieces. That would be fine if a) the battle scenes were extensive and unforgettable and b) if the film's other narrative aspects were at least slightly above average to keep me from rolling my eyes. Regarding b): everything was actually slightly below average.
Regarding a): the battle scenes are alright. Take the ambush scene, for instance. There's flaming boulders slamming into the in-formation Romans. There's heads sliced off at the forehead, spears driven through faces. Then there's the final battle at an abandoned Roman base. There's again some ok moments, when one of the Romans pulls an arrow from his leg and shoves said arrow into a Celtic eye. Both scenes, though, seem a bit cold despite the complex violence. They aren't quite long enough, for one thing.
And because the film is so uneven they don't feel particularly involving. There’s the film's bad pacing. There really was no real sense of dread leading up to either scene. The characters are so flimsy that we can’t mourn them when they got got. For instance, leading up to the ambush, all we get of the soldiers are a scene in a pub where Ferris leads his men in a drunken brawl. There's no sense of anything invested in their war with the Celts, no sense of any of their idiosyncrasies, no sense of what's waiting for them at home. Same goes for the rest of the film leading up to the supposed climax. There’s a single, lame attempt to flesh out the characters where Roman survivors stop in a cave and discuss their plans should they survive. "I have my eye on this farm in Tuscany," says the eldest member of the group. This 5-minute action cliche doesn't do it for me.
Then there's the film's attempt at commentary on war, on the injustices both sides commit. It's a lame, half-hearted meditation though. We're quickly lectured to, for instance, by the leader of the Celts. He tells of how Romans had killed Etain’s family before raping her and cutting out her tongue. On the flip side We're told how the Celts kill and banish their own women who are accused of witchcraft. Enough telling! Show me some hard scenes of any of these characters doing anything. Give me a side to cheer for or a side to cheer against. Or better yet, give me reasons to cheer for and against both sides. Instead, I'm left yawning as they get killed one at a time.
The movie just feels too short, like Marshall should have spent a few more minutes with each character, in each scene. All those wonderful aerial shots of the soldiers running over snow-covered mountains or grassy terrain are nice, but not satisfying. This high-action epic is mediocre and boring, which is much worse than being terrible. At least then I could have done as the Romans and jetted out of the theatre. No, I was too blasé for that and all I mustered up was sulking in my seat.
