The Eagle (2011)

In Roman-ruled Britain, a young Roman soldier endeavors to honor his father's memory by finding his lost legion's golden emblem. 

    I begin by saying how biased I am. "The Eagle of the Ninth" was one of the books of my childhood. When I saw this was coming out as a movie and starred G.I. Joe Tatum as Marcus, I nearly wept. I knew it would be bad. The depth of the character of Marcus would require a good actor, and Tatum, though strong of face and ripped of abs, is not good. So I went to see it in hopes of getting a laugh or two. I got about one laugh.

     It started out somewhat promising, there were Roman soldiers with American accents, yes, but the costumes were accurate. There were fighting scenes. After that, it was so dang boring. The fight scenes were spread way too far out and most of the shots consisted of Tatum and Bell riding across the British countryside scowling at one another. The weirdest thing was the fact that the book had a love interest, but this movie had literally three young women in it, who Tatum smiles at from a distance. That's it. Usually, it's reversed, and the movie adds unnecessary sex and nudity, but nooo. I couldn't even amuse myself by seeing Tatum take a wild British girl back to Rome with him. 

     What drove me nuts was the identity crisis the movie had. Is it pro-Rome and pro-empire, or pro-freedom and pro-native cultures? The idea of changing the movie title to "The Eagle" immediently put the image of America as Rome in my head, which is not an ideal comparison. No one really wants to be compared to Rome unless they want to end up like Rome did, imploding from the outside out. That comparison seemed to stretch on as almost all of the soldiers had American accents and spoke in a very military tone, and at the end (SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER), Tatum's "epic line" of: "Defend the eagle," was seeped in the idea of defending the flag/defending the nation. At the same time, the movie attempted to be sympathetic to native cultures. Oh, look, not all of them are bad, they help this guy, their enemy, and they're just defending themselves against rape and torture and death from the invading forces, poor them. To add another layer of confusion, oh look, this tribe is pure evil, the destruction of their culture is justified, even though Rome invaded them first and provoked all of this, hmm mmm. WHAT! MAKE UP YOUR MIND, MOVIE! I think the "message" was that there aren't good and bad, it isn't black and white, but the message I recieved was: hate everyone. Romans, Britains, they're all horrible. But the Romans are a little better. 

    Horrible. I feel strongly.