Centurion: the perils of empire make for good cinema

Early on in Marguerite Yourcenar’s “Memoirs of Hadrian” the Emperor Hadrian, now 60, muses, “This morning it occurred to me for the first time that my body, my faithful companion and friend, truer and better known to me than my own soul, may be after all a sly beast who will end by devouring his master.”

Could Hadrian be describing the Roman Empire in Neil Marshall’s bloody return to form, Centurion? The realisation that there was a finite limit, an edge at which the eternal glory of Rome had to teeter at, for to go on would end in its self destruction?

Far away from the Eternal City, Centurion Quintas Dias freezes in the most inhospitable backwater of the Empire, Britannia. “Soldiers do the fighting and soldiers do the dying and the Gods never get their feet wet” narrates Dias. Men like Dias are the poor bastards who cling to the precipice, defending Roman civilization from the barbarian hordes of the Picts,who use guerrilla tactics alien to antiquities superpower and their conventional military might. Sound familiar?

“This is a new kind of war,” laments Dias, “a war without honour, a war without end.” The ironic similarities between the invasion of Afghanistan and the Roman occupation of Britain are sharply observed when the governor of Britannia, Gnaeus Julius Agricola, wants a quick military victory so he can get back to Rome. “This place is the graveyard of ambition” he snarls. Agricola promptly disobeys clear tactical logic and orders the full might of the 9th Legion to wipe out the Picts once and for all.

The 9th, led by their beloved, tavern-brawling General, Titus Flavius Virilius, is cocksure and up for the fight. “He’s a ruthless, reckless bastard and I’d die for him without hesitation,” barks Septus of his commander to Dias, recently escaped from a devastating raid by the Picts on his border fort.

Of course, such scar-faced bravado from Septus and his battle brothers can only ever end one way in these films, and the 9th are massacred, betrayed by their beautiful, mute tracker Etain. Marshall shoots this major set piece with stunning savagery, flooding the screen with a wash of blood and a fearsome rhythmic montage of hacked-off limbs, slashed throats and staved-in heads.

Dias and a motley crew of survivors at first try to snatch back the captured Titus but their botched attempt quickly descends into a hunt that mirrors Deliverance, Southern Comfort and even Cross of Iron as Etain and her warriors are unleashed by the Pict king to avenge a horrific crime committed by one of Dias’ men: “Her soul is an empty vessel which only Roman blood can fill.”

Centurion firmly places Marshall back on track after the self-indulgent and ramshackle Doomsday, that was such a disappointment when compared the expertly crafted menace of The Descent. Michael Fassbender continues his climb to A-list status with yet another riveting performance as Dias, ably supported by a great cast including David Morrissey and Noel Clarke, and Olga Kurylenko as the lethal Etain continues Marshall’s obsession with deadly women.

Long may it continue. [rating=4]