The Eagle | Director Kevin MacDonald | Score: 5.2
In a remote Roman fortification somewhere in conquered southern Britain in the year 110 AD, a recently posted centurion suddenly wakes from fitful sleep and senses trouble. Standing on top of his fortification, he peers out into the dark wilderness all around them, futilely scanning the impassive blackness for a sign of his enemy’s whereabouts. It doesn’t take long for his hunch to be proved right – they are swarmed over by barbarians, fighting long into the night. When all is finally settled, the men are saved and their leader, badly injured in the battle, is waking up many miles away.
History is written by the victors, as someone once famously wrote, but Hollywood’s corollary is that it’s also written by desperate screenwriters trying to sell their script by any means necessary. Our sympathies naturally lie with the protagonists we’re following, but in the case of Kevin MacDonald’s swords-and-sandles action drama, we’re asked to root for the Romans, the conquering invaders, in other words, a bit, as they say, like rooting for the house in blackjack.
The centurion in question, Marcus Aquila (Channing Tatum) isn’t in Britain by chance. He’s desperately trying to win back his family’s honor, lost by his father, a Roman military leader who lost his entire garrison and, most humiliatingly, his golden eagle standard in a North Britain battle many years before. Marcus goes on a quest for the lost golden eagle, rumored to be far up north, past the Roman wall separating their conquered lands from the wild wilderness of unruly tribes. He travels with Esca (Jamie Bell), a native slave whose life he spared in gladiatorial combat, but the further they creep into North Britain, the more Esca seethes at his master’s honor fixation. Understandably, he doesn’t see Rome as a noble envoy of honorable soldiers, he sees them as the evil invaders, murdering and enslaving his people, raping and pillaging everything in sight.
Interesting things could conceivably have come out of this scenario, with Marcus at last realizing the folly his fellow countrymen have followed in assigning honor to such bloodthirsty and cruel combat, but, alas, the filmmakers don’t want to overly complicate things. Time and again Marcus is saved and aided dramatically by Esca in his quest to reacquire the eagle. But why, exactly is Esca so loyal to his idiotic master (echoes of a kind of Brokeback Empire aside)? Horribly, the film goes so far as to equate the honor of the two men, as if to suggest there can be some common ground of integrity between the two sides, fighting alongside one another for the symbol of absolute rule and authority of the imperialists. The film wants the ending to be a triumph of some kind, but, instead, it reads as a sad treatise on the damaged psychology of the conquered.
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Piers Marchant is a Philly-based writer and editor, and the EIC (and film critic) for two.one.five magazine (215mag.com). His reviews can be found on 215mag.com and his tumblr blog, Sweet Smell of Success. You can also follow him on twitter @kafkaesque83.
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