CENTVRION

This movie almost counts as a lost classic, because it didn’t make much impression when it was released, and has not had the distinction of becoming a cult film, but it really, absolutely deserves to be. It especially should be appreciated by fans of Sword & Sorcery and Howard, because this is, without doubt, the most Howardian movie ever made.

Directed by British filmmaker Neil Marshall in 2010, Centurion is the story of the historical 9^th Legion, which vanished sometime in the 2^nd century and has long been thought to have been destroyed in some unrecorded military disaster in northern Britain. Since we don’t know for sure what happened, it has been fertile ground for imaginings, with numerous books and films happy to fill in the details history has not left us.

Marshall, director of such gleeful slices of mayhem as Doomsday and The Descent, turns this into a bloody, savage tale of revenge, survival, and treachery laced with gruesome violence and gorgeous cinematography. Shot on location in remote corners of Scotland like Badenoch and Strathspey, the film is filled with desolate vistas of the cold, forbidding Scottish highlands – lands which have remained largely unchanged in the 1800 years since the time depicted in the movie, and still retain their brooding, prehistoric aspect. This lends the look of the film a tremendous authenticity and atmosphere that it otherwise would not have had.

The cast is similarly on-point. Micheal Fassbender gives a commanding, dynamic performance as hero Quintus Dias, and he is joined by a list of fine actors who are all on their game, including several who would go on to greater notoriety. Dominic West is massively charismatic in his role as General Virilus, and former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko is mesmerizing as the Pictish huntress Etain. Liam Cunningham (pre-Game of Thrones) turns up, as do Riz Ahmed, Noel Clarke, and Imogen Poots. The characters are sketched out quickly but sharply, mostly showing who they are rather than telling, and everyone is doing good work.

The action scenes are symphonies of violence, not shying away from blood to get a PG-13 nor wallowing in fake-looking CGI gore. The effects are practical, and the battles are a litany of decapitations, slit throats, hacked limbs, and impalements. So many of the fight scenes can be paused at any point you like to reveal a tableau that would stand up as a cover for any given collection of stories about the Romans in Britain. The music, by the great Ilan Eshkeri, deserves special mention, as it is sweeping and dramatic, elevating everything to another level entirely.

Much like Fury Road, Centurion is really one long chase, with the heroes seemingly pursued from one end of Scotland to the other by revenge-driven Pictish warriors. Kurylenko is especially intimidating in her role as the mute huntress who will stop at nothing to catch and destroy her enemies, and who kills and savages men ferally and fearlessly. The script does not slow down much for any philosophizing or brooding, but is instead a steel-edged spear driving straight ahead. It’s a simple setup of men who will do anything to survive pitted against others who will go to any lengths to kill them. It expertly cranks up the tension and largely keeps it cranked. Fassbender as Quintus starts out as a man trying to do his duty and ends up just trying to survive against pitiless odds.

Given how much Howard loved the Picts and how much he wrote about them, this is like a movie he could have written himself. It is very much in the spirit of classic tales like “Worms of the Earth” or “Kings of the Night”, lacking only an overt supernatural element. If it had that, then Centurion would easily be the best Sword & Sorcery movie ever made. Lacking that, it is still the kind of movie Howard himself would have loved, and there is more of his spirit in it than in any movie based on anything he wrote.

Sadly, the film didn’t do much business – mostly due to a lack of marketing and bad reviews by weak-kneed critics who couldn’t handle all the violence. It lost money and caused a major slowdown of Marshall’s directing career, as he wouldn’t helm another film until this year’s Hellboy. Nevertheless, I think Centurion is his best work to date. It’s tight, focused, well-acted, and gorgeous to look at – it’s amazing to me he made a movie that looks this good for just $12 million, when films like the 2011 Conan spent more than seven times that much and came out as bloated crap. If you haven’t seen Centurion, then you should.