Movie Review – ‘The Eagle’ (2011)

By Lukas Strautins

“In Roman-ruled Britain, a young Roman soldier endeavours to honour his father’s memory by finding his lost legion’s golden emblem.”

– IMDB.com

So imagine a kindergarten kid ranting about a fantabulous story he has just come up with. His enthusiasm and energy preventing him from taking a deep breath between punctuation. That’s basically how this ‘epic’ story plays out. Adapted for the screen of Rosemary Sutcliff’s original novel, screenplay writer Jeremy Brock (The Last King of Scotland) attempts to bring this Roman story to the big screen with director Kevin Macdonald (again from ‘The Last King of Scotland’). With those credits alone, you’d be forgiven to think you’d be in for a treat. Alas, we are not entirely.

120AD, Britain. The Commander of the 9th Legion of Rome, along with 5000 of his soldiers, disappears after trekking north to look for more land to conquer in the name of the Roman Empire. With him he would carry ‘The Eagle’ – a solid gold statue which would be waved in the face of many an enemy in battle and in itself would represent everything great and Holy about the Roman Empire.

Twenty years later, a young commander of a legion of Romans serving in Britannia, Channing Tatum (‘G.I. Joe’,’ Step Up’ and to play in the new big screen version of ’21 Jump Street’) adequately plays Marcus Aquila. His sole backstory is to clear his father’s name amongst those in his homeland who suspect his father of ‘Colonel Custer Syndrome’ (look it up, it’s totally a thing!). Skip forward 7 minutes (because honestly, that’s more or less all it is), Marcus is injured successfully defending his outpost, when he awakens in the residence of his uncle (Donald Sutherland), brother to his father, who hospitably brings him back to health (it’s still not clear how conveniently enough he ends up there with such a close relative he has never met). He is both commended then honourably discharged from service due to his injuries. Insert ‘down in the dumps hero’, Blah, blah, blah, insert ‘humanitarian scene of saving a slave from death, go on to own a slave. Who happens to be a Brit. Who happens to ‘speak the tongue’. Can we guess what happens next?

With nothing to lose on either part, Marcus and his new Brit slave Esca (played actually very well by ‘Billy Elliot’ and new ‘Tin Tin’ voiceover star Jamie Bell) head north, passed ‘the end of the world’ (a wall built by the Romans to stop any natives entering south) and into the Britannic wilderness in search of the elusive Eagle and discover the truth as to what really happened to the 9th Legion and Marcus’ father and his men. Esca is in debt to Marcus (for ‘saving his life’ but hates everything Marcus stands for *insert predictable backstory here*), while Marcus sort of sees how brutal Romans can be.

This is where I’ll try stop with the plotline, because the rest of the story slaps you with a patronising hand, like you couldn’t actually figure out on your own what was going to happen. Tables are turned when the ‘native’ Esca is forced to treat Marcus as a slave, so to save both of their skins against the grumpy and savage locals (who OBVIOUSLY hate Romans). Hands up who can say “Ancient under-cover cop show”!!

This is where this feature, that could have offered so, so much more in its storytelling, falls flat on its face (while bouncing down AMAZING British Highland locations and scenery). It makes me wonder how many screenplay drafts were actually written, or whether the shoot was over-budget and/or time, because from two thirds of the way through, apparently character developments and respect for the audience don’t apply anymore. In parts where you THINK more character development will occur, they sadly don’t, leaving you with a “well what could have happened if…” feeling. They do however meet two key characters who’s impact on the final story falls unfortunately short – One being the savage ‘prince’ of a Britannic ‘Seal People’ tribe, played by Tahar Rahim (whose top notch acting in ‘A Prophet’ won him instant international acclaim). His performance is fine as usual, though his eventual demise is unsatisfying. The other character is a ‘left-over’ legionnaire of Marcus’ father, called ‘Guern’ but named (insert generic Roman latin-esque warrior name here) played by Mark Strong (the baddie from the newer 2009 Sherlock Holmes movie). His character enters, leaves, enters then leaves again without ANY thought as to his meaning.

So what on earth happened to this film?? I feel like I can put it down to a couple of factors. First of all, the film runs close to two hours, still feeling short of the mark. What did they actually leave out of the screenplay? Surely there were development points that were ignored, because each character’s true interaction and/or backstory with others was clearly not implied or shown enough. Second, some key scenes in my opinion were edited far too short, essentially giving a decent composer in Atli Orvarsson much less feeling to work with. How can you put cinematic, heart-felt scores crammed into a 40 second block of a scene that SHOULD mean something? Simply, you can’t. Bad directorial editing.

The ending is like a Disney movie, but even less satisfying. You could almost imagine several crumby movies that have cheesy lines at the end that don’t actually relate to any part of the journey of the characters throughout the movie. It screams: “Didn’t know what do to, cut it short, fade to black, let’s get the heck out of here! Done. Studio’s happy, right…?” But! But, but, but, but…. The ALTERNATE ending is JUST AS BAD! I know it sounds an awful lot like a hack job was made of this, but I can’t help ask myself…. WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED??? Hey, if ‘Lord of The Rings’ could take a novel and condense to 2 hours, why can’t this?

6 out of 10.