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.

SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL (2010 - Cert 15)

The musical biopic is one of my least favourite types of film. They tend to be predictable, formulaic and more often than not they are guilty of portraying their subject in a far more positive light than they might deserve. An exercise in nostalgic worship, which might be nice if you're a fan of Ray Charles, but it doesn't make for interesting viewing for any old cinema goer.

Ian Dury isn't someone I know a vast amount about. I know and love some of his music but I certainly wouldn't hold myself out as an expert on his back catalogue and claim him to be one of my idols. However, I have heard enough over the the years, from a good mate of mine, to know that he lived a very interesting life, had a lot to come to terms with and was a hell of a long way from being a conformist. Based on the small amount of knowledge I have, as I popped in the DVD of Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, I was confident that there was enough in the tank to ensure that the story of Ian Dury, as told by first time writer Paul Viragh and first time feature director Mat Whitecross, was not going to be the run of mill 'journey' of a musician.



And in all honesty, that assumption was pretty much spot on. The story is cleverly set up as a Dury performance, on stage, reciting his poetry, with brightly coloured, energetic, visual imagery and animated sequences, telling the story of his life, which is then effectively portrayed to us in flashback. The film opens in darkness, with Dury (played by the chameleon Andy Serkis) walking on stage towards us, pausing, before lights flash on and he unleashes a tirade of his rhymes at us. It's a great opening and immediately has us thinking of Dury as a performer, not one of us. This portrayal becomes even more cunning when it's compared to the Dury we see in the dull tones of the flashbacks. Immediately two separate persona's are created, the on-stage Dury and the one who struggles with relationships and has to come to terms with his affliction resulting from polio. Don't be fooled, that last sentence is very much the tone of the film - this is not a bundle of laughs by any stretch of the imagination. It's another of the things I admired about the film - it isn't a vehicle solely to celebrate the life of Dury. It's a portrait of a man, warts and all, at times charming, at times repulsive. It's brave and straight away lifts it above other music biopics.

While we are on the subject of portrayal, I must get on to the performance of Andy Serkis. He obviously made headlines initially as the man behind the digital Gollum in Lord of the Rings, but he has promised a lot since then. His Dury is the moment where he really put his marker down as an acting force to be reckoned with. It's not a full on impersonation of Dury, but it's very close. I've looked at some footage of Dury and Serkis is spot on, on and off stage. The renditions of songs are particularly impressive, Serkis throwing himself into it fully - it could almost be Dury. It isn't just the accuracy of his performance though, it's also the intensity of it. Whenever he is on screen he got a reaction from me, whether I was moved to tears, anger or disgust, he had me convinced.  My favourite scene sees Dury speaking to disabled kids at his old school, one second he is teaching them about rhythm, the next he muses on the existence of God. Gripping stuff. Also, when you consider the lengths he went to when striving for accuracy (he stopped using one leg to allow the muscle to reduce so he could authentically echo Dury's polio damaged leg), making Daniel Day-Lewis and Robert De Niro seem like the cast on Hollyoaks, you have a real stand out performance of a tortured soul, coming to terms with a disability, surprisingly absent from the Bafta nominees list.

It isn't just a film about Dury though. The other important character is Baxter, Dury's son, played by Bill Milner (Son of Rambow). Much of the film centres on the relationship between father and son and how they both adapt to one another. At times it's very touching and upsetting, at others it feels slightly laboured and there to act as a device to develop the story. Milner is very good, but at times his scenes feel out of tone to the rest of the film - just padding.

It's good to see some other British actors such as Mackenzie Crook, Noel Clarke and Naomie Harris in such an interesting British production - they all turn in good showings. Ray Winstone is Dury's dad and is his dependable self, although he doesn't have enough of a part to stretch himself and show some flair. Tom Hughes, also seen in Cemetery Junction, is very good as Chaz Jankel and should have a good future ahead of him. I'll look forward to seeing what he has in store next. Toby Jones is the one that really jumps out from the supporting cast as Hargreaves, the nasty teacher at Dury's school. Its true that we always remember the bad guys but Jones loves it and is a real bastard.

Serkis, all make it very watchable. I imagine it's a must see for all Dury fans, but for any fan of well made cinema there are plenty of reasons to be cheerful.