Soaring Roman adventure

Kevin Macdonald is a talented, versatile filmmaker. Debuting with the awe-inspiring tale of survival in Touching the Void and following that up with the political thriller The Last King of Scotland, he goes for something completely unexpected: a conventional, action driven quest story. I must admit even I was surprised that The Eagle worked out so well.

During the Roman conquests, there was one area that Emperor Hadrian didn’t manage to tame and subdue: the north of the area now known in the UK as Scotland. To keep the northeners out of his area and to protect his people from the northerners, Hadrian commanded the construction of a massive wall between the north and the rest of his world. It is in the north, though, that the legendary tribute of the Roman Empire, the golden Eagle, was surrendered by a cold, hungry and scared Ninth Legion – hence the references to the Eagle of the Ninth – to history.

Flash forward a few years, and strapping lad Marcus (Channing Tatum) has so successfully climbed the ranks of the Roman army that he soon commands his own fort. Not long after his arrival, his bravery puts him in a precarious situation and he ends up living with his uncle (Donald Sutherland) and with a slave, Esca (Jamie Bell) to his name. Soon adventure by way of road movie conventions unfolds as the search for the Eagle starts.

With stunning Scottish scenery and a surprisingly dapper performance by Tatum, The Eagle recreates a fascinating period from Roman history mixed in with historical legend. It uses the class tension between Marcus and Esca to strong, if expected, dramatic effect and doesn’t flinch from on-screen brutality. It’s a perfect companion piece to Neil Marshall’s more kinetic Centurion with Michael Fassbender. Spectacle is important for both films, but The Eagle is the more measured, character driven film.

After a year of battling robots, superheroes, indulgent slow motion and accelerated fast motion across the action and adventure genres, The Eagle demonstrates how, sometimes, a simple story well told can be unexpectedly gratifying. It’s a genre film through and through, evoking themes of honour, integrity, duty and responsibility, and without the excesses of Rome.

All roads

The HBO-BBC co-production “Rome” (Season 1), with solid Ciaran Hinds as Julius Caesar and Kevin McKidd as Lucius Vorenus, paints a vivid if sensational portrait of life in Rome at the time of Caesar’s rise to power. The 12-episode first season uses actual sets and CGI to bring the ancient city to life. But the characters, not the look of the show, is what made me watch this: the chance to see Caesar, Brutus, Mark Anthony, Pompey Magnus, Cato, Cicero and other key figures from Roman history orate, plan, deceive and die. Those figures are all part of the Roman elite, so the show gives us two plebs, soldiers Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, who have their own narrative line that inevitably crosses with other characters’. There are historical records indicating the existence of an actual Vorenus and Pullo, but the characters in the show are pure studio fictions, forcing the men into a ‘buddy-movie’ hate-him-but-he’s-my-brother type of relationship. Indeed, it is unfortunate that many of the secondary characters are rather wooden and underwritten (as is the case with Mark Anthony – apparently, he gets his due in the second season).

With full frontal male and female nudity, a dash of lesbianism and plenty of graphic violence, this is far from the superior, civilised empire often taught in history lessons. This dirty, messy TV “Rome” is an Empire for the masses. Lavish and fast paced, it requires less patience than the superior “Deadwood” and more tolerance, from a critical perspective, of its emphasis on spectacle. All said and done, I cannot wait to get my hands on the second (and final; the show was ultimately too expensive to produce) season.

DVD extra features include episode commentaries; a shot-by-shot approach to two key scenes of the first season; and “All Roads Lead to Rome”, where, when activated, text boxes appear as an episode unfolds to clarify and elaborate upon religious, social, cultural and political life as lived in ancient Rome.

For interesting trivia about the show (spoiler warning), visit http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0384766/trivia.