Don't F**k with the Ninth

As the volcanic ash crisis slowly comes to a conclusion and the voices of hindsight weigh in with their opinions, it falls to me to mourn the fact that it didn't arrive earlier –  if only for purely cinematic reasons. I don't know if the dust cloud has grounded helicopters, but if it has it would have performed a great service during the filming of Neil Marshall's Centurion. For now that the director has been released into the open air following The Descent’s claustrophobic shocks, he proves unfortunately enamoured of the sweeping helicopter shot. In his tale of Roman legionaries on the run in the wilds of Scotland, Marshall seems on a mission to make a film which will delight the Scottish Tourist Board – by cramming as much of the Highlands into the frame as possible – but disappoint the audience. When used sparingly, the aerial shot can be a powerful device. But it is also an alienating one, withdrawing us from a human perspective, and is best used only when the basics of story-telling have been attended to. This is something that Marshall fails to do in Centurion. Instead he leaves us unmoved as we repeatedly swoop over his band of Benetton legionaries, pursued across generic Highland scenes by blue-painted Picts mounted on horses which, even at a full gallop, seem mysteriously unable to gain on a running man.

This is a shame as the myth of the disappearance of the Ninth Legion in Scotland – the springboard for the film's story – is one that really fires the imagination, giving us a sense of our own country as a dark and forbidding wilderness. A director like Werner Herzog would have emphasised the isolation of the legionaries in this hostile environment, and used it to strip away the usual distractions of the period film in order to transport us into the minds of men two thousand years ago. Instead, Centurion and its references to a “new kind of war, a war without armour and without end”, heavy-handedly hints at contemporary parallels with Afghanistan and Iraq, and sets itself up as Bravo Two Zero in a toga.

In the midst of this, Michael Fassbender bravely tries to keep our attention with an effective performance, whilst Dominic West adopts that barking half-shout that actors employ when called upon to hold a sword and wear a skirt. His straining vocal chords may be less the result of his discomfit with his primitive underwear, as it is with dialogue which lurches from macho anachronisms (“When will they learn not to fuck with the Ninth?”) to cod classicisms (“To kill a snake you have to cut off its head” - well, yes, I guess that would do it). Try underplaying lines like these. Olga Kurylenko, as the beautiful but demonic Etain, has the inestimable advantage of playing a character who has had her tongue cut out and is thus excused from speaking. Instead, during the many sword fights she expresses herself through grunts worthy of a Wimbledon champion.

If I'm being unduly harsh on the film it is because I was doubly disappointed. Firstly, because I enjoyed Marshall's first two films, Dog Soldiers and The Descent, so much. Secondly, because I'm always excited to see Scotland on film, for the chance to see our familiar landscapes re-imagined by great story-tellers. This is sadly something Marshall has failed to do in Centurion. Luckily, this year there are a couple more chances for me to fulfil this desire. Like the proverbial bus, a second film about the Ninth Legion, The Eagle of the Ninth, will rumble into view in September. Directed by Kevin MacDonald and based on Rosemary Sutcliff's wonderful book, this should be an entertaining example of classical story-telling. More of a wild card will be the Danish-Scottish production of Valhalla Rising, with Vikings tramping across Scotland (standing in for pre-Columbus America) convinced they have reached the after-life. Filmed in the documentary, ecstatic tradition of Herzog's Aguirre this could finally be the film to alter our view of the Scottish landscape permanently.