Centurion

I have a very rare opportunity before me. I don’t think I have ever had this much power in my life, as little power as it may be. I feel the way I felt on Election Day. I have the potential to keep a terrible movie from being released, and that is what I hope to do. I was privileged enough to have my brains insulted at a secret screening of “Centurion,” at SXSW 2010. I should have known what I was getting myself into. I remember when I saw “The Descent,” just how bad I thought it was. There must be something to that movie because I remember everyone I was with liked it, but to me it was one of the worst things I had ever seen. It’s rare that I actually hate something, because hatred takes effort. But I can safely say that I really hate this movie. And if I can somehow voice these feelings and stop people from wasting their hard earned money, or possibly stop more movies like this from being made, then I have done my good deed for the day.

“Centurion,” is about a Roman soldier who is trapped behind enemy lines fighting the Picts in England. One odd thing about this film is that you’re supposed to be on the Roman’s side, even though they are the invaders. What makes it even weirder is that all the actors playing Roman’s are British, so it’s like they are desecrating their own history or something. The plot of this film goes nowhere. It is so slow. It takes forever for the soldier to even be stranded. All the battle scenes are terrible. The way they are edited, you have no idea what you are even looking at. It’s just ten minutes of quick cuts from blood to armor, back and forth, it’s impossible to care about what’s happening. Parts of it are ridiculous. I distinctly recall a part of the film where someone runs into a tree and their head explodes. Even Dominic West can’t save this movie; I never understand it when good actors do bad movies.

At the end of the day I just never cared about any of the characters. None of the conflict seemed like anything interesting. After an hour or so I was just hoping it would end soon. This film is just poor story telling. I’m sure that some historian somewhere will be more upset with this movie than I was, because surely the real events were fascinating, it just got made into a shitty film. I don’t know what the filmmaker was trying to accomplish here, but whatever it was he failed. I feel bad when I trash films like this, but then I remember sitting in the theater when the director took a big steaming dumper in my eyes for two hours and I don’t feel as bad anymore.