Neil Marshall, Warner Bros (24/04/10)

The director Neil Marshall grew up in North East England, close to Hadrian’s Wall, so you could well understand why he might feel an affinity for the land that lies beyond that ancient stone border. Marshall has now based three of his films on Scottish soil, but if he has a love for that country then he has a funny way of showing it.

In his breakthrough effort, Dog Soldiers, the Caledonian countryside was a feeding ground for werewolves. In the futuristic adventure Doomsday, it was a quarantine zone which had descended into barbarism and anarchy. Now, comes Centurion, an exhilarating, but gore-strewn, epic set in AD 117, when the Roman conquest of Britain came to an abrupt halt thanks to the ferocity and warrior cunning of the Pict tribes.

The film’s opening titles have barely finished before the lead character, the Centurion Quintus Dias (Michael Fassbender), complains that Scotland is ‘the asshole of the world’. One can hardly see the Scottish Tourist Board adopting that as their next tag line. It is not just the biting cold that has got to Quintus but also the pervading threat of having a Pict spear rammed up his tunic. His fears are well founded as the Roman fortress is attacked and overrun by painted natives. Anyone with even the slightest grasp of Latin is slaughtered but Quintus is merely taken captive.

The Centurion’s future looks none too bright until he is rescued by the men of the legendry Ninth Legion led by General Virilus (Dominic West). The General is much admired by his unruly men, one of whom describes him as a ‘wild, reckless bastard’. At least, I think that was a compliment. Quintus quickly mucks in with his new comrades but he turns out to be something of a Jonah. On their next march out, in search of the enemy, the Legion is surprised by the Picts and promptly massacred. Aside from Virilus, who is taken hostage, there are only seven Roman survivors. Seven is of course the lucky number when it comes to macho groupings in the movies (see Samurai and Dwarves for earlier examples).

There follows a spot of bonding in the shelter of a cave so that each man can briefly tell their story and reveal the special talents that will help audiences tell them apart in the chaos that is to come. One is an athlete, another is a cook and so on. The gang attempt to rescue their General from the Pict camp but it all goes badly wrong. One of the men kills the son of Gorlacon (Ulrich Thomsen), who might sound like a Transformer but is actually the tribal chieftain. Gorlacon is, naturally, rather upset about this and sends his warriors in pursuit of the fleeing Romans, led by Etain (Olga Kurylenko), a beautiful but savage female.

Neil Marshall has got a bit of a cheek really as Centurion sees him filming the same story for the fourth time in a row. All his plots so far have boiled down to a small group of people lost in the wilderness being bumped off, one by one, at the hands or claws of ferocious assailants. I have to admit, though, when it comes to making these types of pulp genre movies Marshall is very good at what he does. Whilst some films become cult viewing at a gradual pace, sometimes years after their initial release, Marshall has the knack of creating pictures which arrive with an air of cultdom already attached.

Centurion probably did not have the biggest budget ever signed off to a motion picture but Marshall does not let that hold him back. The attack on the Ninth Legion is a spectacular set piece which begins with great balls of fire hurtling down a hillside and ends with the forest floor being littered with the bodies of the dead. There are also some nice aerial shots of the protagonists traipsing across snowy mountain peaks which look like they have been lifted from The Lord of the Rings but that is no bad thing. The cast consists of reliable, familiar faces, David Morrissey and Noel Clarke amongst them, several of whom appear relatively briefly before their character is ‘pict’ off.

Despite the misery and suffering on-screen, I imagine the actors had a wail of a time making Centurion as it looks likes the thespian equivalent of a stag weekend. This is something of a boy’s movie all round, with the legionnaires behaving like modern day blokes, brawling gambling and laughing raucously at their own crude jokes. The women’s roles are limited. Imogen Poots pops in as a potential love interest for Quintus and there is ex-model and former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko as the deadly Etain. Then again, her character is mute after having her tongue cut out as a young girl. Let’s see, a beautiful woman who is handy in a fight and yet unable to talk. The lads’ mags will love her although I imagine female commentators might have something to say about this deep-seated piece of wish fulfilment.

Centurion is incredibly violent. By the end of proceedings there can hardly be a part of the human anatomy that has not been stabbed, lopped off or otherwise mutilated in the bloody cavalcade of skirmishes. Incredibly, the film comes with a 15 certificate. God knows what you have to do to get an 18 these days. Actually, I have seen what you have to do and it is not pretty. Still, if you have the stomach for it then there is much guilty pleasure to be had from Centurion. Supposedly based on a 2000 year old legend, the film might be as historically accurate as Carry on Cleo for all I know, but it sets out on a mission to entertain and for the most part it succeeds with a formula of brutal action and pulse -quickening chase scenes.

review: Alan Diment