CENTURION (2010 - Cert 15)

Neil Marshall knows how to do violence. Dog Soldiers was a smashing debut and fantastic take on the Werewolf tale, pitting the British army against a family of lycanthropes, The Descent was a brilliantly claustrophobic horror film involving a girls weekend away caving and Doomsday, the story of a Scotland walled off after the outbreak of a virus but now locked in civil war, was a darkly violent mess of a film. I suppose it was only a matter of time before he went back in time and had a crack at the Roman era and a sword and sandals epic.



With his previous efforts Neil Marshall has managed to carefully straddle the thin line between naff and cult. He somehow managed to make genre films that were clearly influenced by the work of others, even nodding and referencing at times, but layer them with something original, something that gave them a bit of something extra. So it's even more disappointing that he lazily cobbles together a plot which has massive elements of Gladiator (revenge, blah, blah) and then combines it with the surviving resistance strand of 300. Effectively, he decides to make a film as a British, cult, homage to those two films but decides to just rip the stories off completely.

He gets together quite a cast as well. All sorts of British talent. Michael Fassbender, Dominic West, Noel Clarke, David Morrissey and Riz Ahmed. All playing varying types of soldier with different levels of fighting skill, but none of which have anything interesting to do whatsoever other than killing or maybe dying in an interesting way. Fassbender is the closest we have to a character, bit of conflict here, an angry look into the distance there. Not exactly The King's Speech. The ace up his sleeve is Olga Kurylenko as a female Pict warrior. The inclusion of a seemingly indestructible female lead is meant to be that bit of something extra. It offers nothing though, not a sausage (no pun intended - ok, maybe it was).

I shouldn't spend too much time worrying about plot  and acting though, because it's not exactly the biggest draw of this sort of film. It's the action, the blood, the gore. How does Centurion fare in this department? Well if that's what your after it does it very well. The action is as you would expect, frenetic editing of swords, axes, arrows and any other type of weapon you can imagine thrashing about cutting through flesh. There's a good scene that heralds the introduction of rolling fireballs to the compendium of tools at the disposal of Romans. The gore quota is also met well, squelchy sounds and claret flying everywhere satisfy those needs more than adequately. The truth is though that this isn't nearly enough. Decapitation and dismembered limbs aren't enough to make up for a distinct lack of everything else. It's all just so boring.....lacking. My concentration wavered constantly. It's only 97 minutes long, that should not be happening.

I've asked myself why Centurion is so different from Marshall's other films, both Dog Soldiers and The Descent are essentially the same, people striving for survival against the odds. With lots of violence. I've not been able to answer that question though, but there is definitely something missing, an edge, a soul, I don't know, I could throw a collection of other pretentious words at it, it might just be the absence of Sean Pertwee dying in a horrendous manner, but whatever is missing Marshall needs to find it because as the budgets are getting bigger he's losing something.

Not even worth watching when you get home from the pub drunk with a kebab.

FOUR LIONS (2010)

A comedy, about suicide bombers. By Chris Morris. You could hear the gasps. You would expect it to be just about the most outrageous and offensive piece of cinema ever. Or art for that matter. The politically correct brigade were sharpening their knives in anticipation of the film's release. People braced themselves for the backlash.



It's not at all what you would expect though. It doesn't attempt shock comedy just for the sake of headlines, it is much cleverer than that in it's pursuit of laughs. It doesn't focus on hate and anger, instead it is a film with heart and emotion. It explores the issues at the crux of home-grown terrorism but doesn't get bogged down in trying to make an overblown statement.

Morris and his writing team avoid the temptation to portray the group of terrorists that we follow as fanatical lunatics, instead opting to have a collection of idiotic clowns and a white Muslim convert (Nigel Lindsay on very funny form) led by everyman Omar (played by Riz Ahmed). Much of the early comedy is taken from their calamitous attempts at getting their Jihad plan into action, a video where they address the Nation of Islam with one of them holding a toy gun. Another tries to cover up buying dozens of bottle of bleach from the same shop by putting on different voices. Two of the group go to a training camp in Pakistan where they inevitably make a pig's ear out of it all. After a while though it becomes clear that the film is about a group of friends, it doesn't really matter what they are trying to do, it's just about friends, all be it brain-dead friends, trying to achieve something together and how it affects their relationship.

This is where the more serious undertones start to come through and the film explores the idea that the suicide bombers in the world might not know fully what they are doing, and that they are led into it by more intelligent associates. It's interesting that the real moral of the story is nothing to do with terrorism but is actually about being a good friend. It's impressive that the film focuses on such a small idea while it could easily have a grander mission, beyond it's station.

Morris is a satirist and this shines through constantly. The film highlights some of the inconsistencies with religion as they try to make sense of what they are doing, only to confuse themselves further. It's not just Islam and religion that gets dealt with though, the incompetency of the police and the stereotypical assumptions that people make are all raised and mocked accordingly. Subtle digs consistently crop up, I probably need to see the film again just to pick up on them all.

The climax of the film, The London Marathon, makes for the most obvious laughs and is very entertaining, including possibly the funniest sniper moment in the history of film, but it does go off the boil as it nears the conclusion. The viewer is expected to be moved by how it plays out, but the reality is that the characters, with the exception of Omar, are all basically two-dimensional caricatures solely there for chuckles throughout the film, and I therefore didn't really feel connected. It feels laboured and clunky, fall out of step with how impressive the film was before that point. It just goes to show how difficult comedy is, to write characters for your amusement and also your emotions. It's a shame because there are some nice touching moments, again centred on Omar, with his son (likening the fight against the West to The Lion King) and his wife.

So Chris Morris has managed to make a touching, intimate, understated and funny film about suicide bombers, without once resorting to shock tactics, violence and over the top drama. The comedy being instant with the more mature themes lingering long after the film has finished. In essence, a very British film. It's a great achievement and has got him, and the film, well deserved nods at the Baftas, although I suspect it will lose out on both awards for which it is nominated.

Do not be put off by the subject matter, well worth a watch.