#2 Centurion
December 26th 2010 20:21
The second movie on my quest for 365 is Centurion starring Michael Fassbender and Dominic West. The Movie is directed by Neil Marshall.
Marshall has directed Doomsday, The Descent and Dog Soliders
It is A.D. 117 and the Roman garrisons are struggling to contain the Picts, the Celtic inhabitants of the Scottish Highlands. The Picts under their king, Gorlacon, are perfecting guerilla warfare and are eliminating Roman outposts one by one. Centurion Quintus Dias is the only survivor of a Pictish raid and is taken prisoner by Vortix, an axe-wielding Pict. In the meantime, Agricola, the Roman governor of Britannia wants to obtain favour with the central administration, hoping to secure a transfer back to the comforts of Rome. He dispatches the Ninth Legion to the front under General Titus Flavius Virilus, with orders to eradicate the Pictish threat, providing him with a mute female Brigantian scout, Etain.
As the legion marches north, they encounter and save Dias, who has escaped. Etain, who in truth hates the Romans for murdering her family, betrays the legion to Gorlacon: the Romans walk into a trap and are annihilated. Dias, with six other survivors, veterans Bothos and "Brick", soldiers Macros, Leonidas and Thax and Tarak, a cook from the Hindu Kush, learn that Virilus has been taken prisoner and set out to rescue him, ditching their armour in order to travel swiftly. They find the Pictish settlement and sneak in at night, but fail to break the general's chains; he orders them to leave him and get back to the safety of Roman territory. As they retreat, one of the men, Thax kills Gorlacon's young son. The next morning, after the dead boy is burned, the general is given a sword and made to duel with Etain, who kills him.
The seven decide to return south via a long detour over the mountains, while Etain with a Pict detachment are sent on horseback to track and kill them, in revenge for the king's son. They eventually catch up with the fugitives, who have to jump off a cliff and into a stream. Tarak is killed by the Pict archer Aeron before he can make the jump; the others survive the fall, but Macros and Thax end up separated from the others, and pursued by wolves.
With night falling, Dias and his group set up camp for the night, only to realise that their Pictish trackers have intentionally set up camp nearby. Dias and Brick launch a night raid on the enemy camp, killing several men, but find Etain missing. Interrogating a wounded Pict, Quintas learns of the death of Gorlacon's son, and that Etain has launched her own attack on the Roman camp, in which Leonidas is killed and Bothos injured.
Macros and Thax, meanwhile, are still running from the wolves, with Macros, the faster runner, staying well clear of Thax, who eventually falls. When Macros returns to help him, Thax slices through Macros' hamstrings to prevent him from running, allowing Thax to escape while the wolf pack devour his former comrade.
Dias, Bothos and Brick happen upon a hut in the forest and befriend Arianne, a Pictish exile accused of witchcraft, who lives there. She shelters them, provides food and medical attention to the injured Bothos and when Etain comes the following day, Arianne confronts her while the Romans hide under the floorboards. The next morning, with Bothos now well enough to travel, they leave Arianne, who, having developed something of a connection with Dias, provides them with additional food, to travel to a nearby garrison. On arrival, they find it abandoned: an order on a wall informs them that Roman troops have retreated south, to Hadrian's Wall. As they see Etain and a group of Picts approach, they set up a defensive position inside the fort. A battle ensues, in which Etain, Vortix, Aeron and the rest of the pursuers are all slain, although Brick perishes before the Picts are defeated.
Camping overnight on their way south, Dias and Bothos are, by chance, reunited with Thax and the trio continue onwards. Upon reaching Hadrian's Wall, Thax threatens Dias, who says that he will report his crimes and the two fight with Dias as the victor. Bothos, riding joyfully towards the Roman construction works, is mistaken for a Pict and shot by Roman soldiers. When Dias enters the camp he reports the situation to the governor. Agricola, concerned that, should news of the Legion's annihilation become common knowledge, other tribes may rise up against them, and also not wishing his record to be tainted by a military failure, decides that it would be better if the Ninth Legion's fate remained a mystery and thus Dias must be killed.
The governor's daughter is trusted with Dias' assassination. He manages to disrupt the attempt on his life, killing two legionaries in the process, though he is stabbed in the leg during the fight. He escapes the camp and returns to live with Arianne in the forest. Dias repeats the line "this is neither the beginning nor the end of my story", as said at the start of the film, again at the end, suggesting that he survives his wounds with Arianne's help.
This movie is a movie you will need to see. I give it a 5.5 on my scale. The movie is great to watch some blood being spilled and i am a big Dominic West fan. Buy it on DVD only if you get it for 8 dollars or less. This movie is one of those movies you would watch every couple of years just to see the fighting.
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