For a director with the best horror film of the past decade under his belt (The Descent), it’s been hard to get a handle on Neil Marshall, what with his triumph being bookended by the slight-but-fun Dog Soldiers and, more recently, the fan-wank love letter to ’80s B-movies Doomsday, an undisciplined mess of a film almost saved by sheer exuberance. (To lift a line from Pauline Kael, it was crap, but crap on a rocket-cycle.)
Happily, Marshall’s latest, Centurion, manages to split the difference between his earlier films, resulting in a taut, suspenseful war film that can also go deliriously excessive when warranted. For anyone burned out on the quick-cut, overly stylized Bruckheimerization of modern action movies, this is the real headbanging deal.
Set during the early A.D. Roman conquest of Britain, Marshall’s script follows a dwindling cadre of Roman soldiers (including
Michael Fassbender and a scene-stealing Dominic West) struggling to get out from behind enemy lines while under constant siege from a rolling boil of ticked off Picts, led by a mystical, mute female tracker with one helluva grudge. Wolves are involved.
On the surface, this saga of desperate men against impossible odds may resemble 300, but Marshall eschews that film’s simonized, posturing stance in favor of a leaner genre sensibility: Characterizations are quickly sketched but satisfying, the bad guys are given just enough depth to be scary, and you always have a sense of who happens to be firing arrows at whom. The squeamish may want to look elsewhere (the filmmaker tends to have an issue with eyeballs staying in their proper place), but if you’re in the mood for a guilt-free rush, this is just the thing: an all-out action film that won’t leave the viewer feeling ill-used. Fans of Gonad Cinema, hark. 
If it’s really the best (or even the most decent) horror film of the past decade you at least might want to get it spelled right: The Descent.
Mmm. Michael Fassbender. Sign me up.
Because after Miho (Sin City), River Tam (Firefly), Echo (Daredevil), The Female (The Boys), and a bunch more I can’t be bothered to remember, what popular culture really needs is ANOTHER mute female bad-ass.
I liked Centurion. it’s a great action film and the scenery’s breathtaking. There are historical inaccuracies – they alwasy are in movies – yet in many ways they did a good job. I love the Picts. – if you won’t more of that time perriod – check out Druid Bride at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWYm04F6_…
Druid Bride – aslo set in 1st cent. AD Scotland
River Tam speaks, dumbass.
This movie is a hokey, plodding piece of shit that is more likely to produce snoring than any kind of entertainment value.
If you are considering seeing it, save yourself some money and cut your toenails instead- you will be far more engaged.
@3- What @5 said. My nerd rage is at 11.
This film was absolute nonsense the picts never had a king but lived in small communities with chiefs in charge of each community. This just seems like this was written to make the stars of the film look good. People who want to make these films shouldn’t bother unless they want to get there facts right. One format that is always adhered to is that Scottish people descendants of the picts are always played by English, Irish, Scandinavians, French but never indigenous people of Scotland formerly Caledonia are we to stupid I find this nearly as offensive as braveheart where some idiot from America named Wallace heard of a namesake in Willaim and created a fantasy that discredited the real history and our greatest king robert the Bruce. As far as River Tam she kicks ass and Summer Glau at least has Scottish blood in her.