Centurion

A British specialist in tightly constructed, low-budget horror movies, Neil Marshall here progresses, if that's the word, to the historical action movie and a sizable budget. A couple of years ago, in The Last Legion , Colin Firth led the remnants of a Roman force wandering around the crumbling Hadrian's Wall in 480AD and providing the basis for Arthurian legends. In Centurion , set in the second century AD, Dominic West and Michael Fassbender are a pair of tough Romans leading a detachment of the Ninth Legion on an impossible action against the deadly Picts and fighting their way back towards home through hostile territory only to be betrayed by a local commander saving face and an irresolute leadership back in Rome. There are inevitable parallels with our current post-imperial endeavours: insurgent Picts, torture and bad faith on both sides. But, as Marshall indicates with a final credit acknowledging "Walter Hill & Xenophon for the Inspiration" , the film's real debt is to Hill's adaptation of the Anabasis as The Warriors . The dialogue is an uneasy mixture of fustian and barrack-room demotic (eg: "Is this Hadrian's big fucking plan – a wall?") and the picture is vigorous without being particularly invigorating.