Early Reviews Are In For Centurion
The movie about the Ninth Legion got a sneak peek showing at the SXSW Festival
Well, Swords & Sandals fans, we've got two early reviews in for Centurion and they are somewhat different from each other. The SXSW Festival had a midnight surprise screening of the Neil Marshall film.
Here is some of what John Dafoe over at The Hollywood Reporter had to say:
"Bottom Line: Unpretentious swords-and-sandals film crafts a tight survival drama out of Roman Empire lore.
A refreshing answer to filmmakers who believe any swords-and-sandals film must be epic or at least overwrought, Neil Marshall's "Centurion" delivers some large-scale action but plays almost like a Roman-era Western in its depiction of a few soldiers trying to get home alive after the slaughter of their comrades.
Marshall isn't uninterested in the battlefield, to be sure: In the film's first half, he stages enthusiastically gory scenes that, for audiences not averse to very tight framing and very quick cutting, effectively depict a conflict leaving most of this band of Roman soldiers dead.
But he is also eager to imagine a more intimate scenario, in which the son of a gladiator (Fassbender) tries to rescue survivors and get them safely through some beautifully photographed terrain to a Roman stronghold."
Now, from the same screening, blog writer Anne Thompson, had her own feelings about the movie:
"The good news: the movie kept me awake and Michael Fassbender and Dominic West are strong leads as the titular centurion and the general of the ninth legion, respectively. The bad news: the movie is a slightly cheesy period B actioner, rife with bloody, gory slo-mo fighting with squibs of gushing red blood and lopping off of heads. Think Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Only straight."
DogsOfWar-Two slightly different takes on the movie. Both acknowledge some fairly gory and tough battle scenes but one emphasizes a compelling drama while the other shoots the storyline down. I find it very interesting the first reviewer is male and the second, female. Sounds like this will be a definite Guy Movie. I'm stoked!
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DogsOfWar
3/16/2010
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