THE EAGLE
Directed by Kevin Macdonald
Produced by Duncan Kenworthy
Written by Jeremy Brock, based on the novel The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff
Released by Focus Features
USA/UK. 114 min. Rated PG-13
With Channing Tatum, Jamie Bell, Mark Strong, Denis O’Hare, Tahar Rahim & Donald Sutherland
 

It isn’t so strange that two movies about the same topic are released around the same time. That’s to be expected: producers and filmmakers all probably know what each other are doing, are quick to make a fast buck off an obvious trend, and are exposed to the same cultural forces. What’s strange is that the topics are so damn off-the-wall. About a decade ago, the world welcomed a brace of meteors-destroying-the-earth films, Armageddon and Deep Impact. And recently we got not one but two Truman Capote biopics (Capote and the other one nobody saw). Now we have The Eagle coming less than a year after Centurion. That is, audiences are expected to endure two pictures released in a 12-month span about the most outré of topics: the disappearance of Rome’s Ninth Legion in northern Britain in the second century A.D. Surely this negligible chapter of history is not screaming for a revisit so soon?

Based on a children’s novel by Rosemary Sutcliff, The Eagle follows a he-man Roman centurion by the name of Marcus Aquila (played by a slab of man flesh, Channing Tatum). When we meet him, he’s just taken up a post as commander of a garrison in Britain. He chose this hostile territory because he hopes to redeem the honor lost by his father, who commanded the Ninth years earlier when it disappeared without a trace somewhere in the north, taking its precious eagle standard with it. Conveniently, on his first night there, Marcus repulses an attack of aggrieved and hairy Britons—led by what looks to be a rogue Gandalf fan at a Lord of the Rings convention—and is wounded in the process. He’s cashiered and left to recover in southern Britain in the villa of his uncle (Donald Sutherland, appearing all too briefly).

But rather than idle about on his bad leg, defending his dad’s honor at dinner parties (what sort of movie would that be?), Marcus decides to head north across Hadrian’s Wall to recover the legion’s eagle standard and learn what happened to his dad. As his guide, he takes along a British slave, Esca (Jamie Bell), whom he rescued from a gladiatorial contest. A proud Briton, Esca hates Marcus. But with his knife, he swears an oath on his father, chief of the Brigantes (it’s that sort of story), to defend Marcus because he saved his life.

The two proceed to tramp through spectacular, often moist, British vistas, pausing occasionally to take in lenser Anthony Dod Mantle’s majestic cinematography. They switch roles—Marcus is forced to pretend to be Esca’s slave to escape some nasty mud-covered braves—quarrel about Roman imperial policy, and learn to depend on each other as they grudgingly start to respect the other’s fighting ability and his people. You’ve seen this all before, but it’s enjoyable enough. And daringly, the plot progression is not saddled with a “don’t-worry-they’re-not-gay” love interest, or a speaking female role of any kind, to distract from this manliest of manly friendships.

Unlike Centurion, a bloody comic book of a film that focused more on creative deaths than coherent storytelling, this takes a more ethnographic approach, featuring lots of tribal customs and war dances among painted British natives. Really, it’s a sort of a western of the northern isles, with Romans and Celts replacing cowboys and Indians, but a mature western, where the natives are granted their share of humanity. The Britons, too, with their harsh and guttural language and list of anti-imperialist grievances, are not without political relevance, but it’s not shoved in your face. It’s more to make their anxieties recognizable than to score a point.

Mostly, The Eagle engages in its rather deliberately simple way, where ideas are hewn down to comprehensible symbols—the brass eagle, a warrior’s dagger—for a kid to grasp. The violence, too, has a bloodless, PG-13 indistinctiveness, all close-up, fast cuts of slashings and stabbings, making the action moderately safe for children but a bit numbing and hard to follow for everyone else. (As I am compelled to compare them, Centurion was genuinely a small masterpiece of imaginative violence.)

But that’s not to say The Eagle is untroubled by corniness. Near the end, it’s just handfuls of corn where there should be a climax. It should have embarrassed director Kevin Macdonald and writer Jeremy Brock (both of The Last King of Scotland fame). And Tatum is watchable, but his accent perplexes. It seems he’s trying to clip and flatten the American out of his voice—perhaps thinking the American dialect would be disconcerting to viewers since we’re accustomed, as Anthony Lane once wisely pointed out, to hearing ancient peoples speak with a British accent. Brendon Nafziger
February 11, 2011