On the couch

`Centurion is the latest quality slice of low budget action from Dog Soldiers and Doomsday mastermind Neil Marshall with the director turning his eye towards a bit of sword and sandle chicanery in Roman-occupied Britian. `Centurion is the latest quality slice of low budget action from Dog Soldiers and Doomsday mastermind Neil Marshall with the director turning his eye towards a bit of sword and sandle chicanery in Roman-occupied Britian.
Based on the legend of the Ninth Legion, a squadron of Roman soldiers that were sent to fight beyond Hadrian’s Wall and subsequently disappeared without a trace, Centurion focuses on the trials and tribulations of Quintus Dias (Michael Fassbender) who survives a Pict attack on his remote outpost only to be captured and tortured by his enemy.
Wiley divil that he is, Quintus escapes and makes it back to Roman-held territory just in time to hook up with charismatic super general, General Titus Flavius Virilus (Dominic West) as the men of the Ninth are ordered to head north and solve the problem of the restless natives once and for all.
This best laid plan is obviously doomed to failure and, one quick massacre later, Quintus and a handful of survivors of the Ninth are left trapped and hunted deep in enemy territory with little or no hope for escape. Whatever will become of them?
Of course there’s a hint of a whisper of an inkling of a political statement lurking at the back of things. Quintus doesn’t really think the Romans should be in Britian but is a soldier dedicated to his job despite the politics; General Virilus is doing a tough job and leading his men with honour; the Picts are waging a guerilla war against their country’s occupiers and causing political upheaval due to their success.
Despite the political undertones, however, Centurion is, at it’s heart, a chase movie and in that respect it’s a good one. The pace never falters and the action is thrilling and terrifying in proper order.
Where it falls down, however, is the characters. There isn’t enough meat on their bones to make you really care about their survival one way or the other – a waste because an extra edge of drama is missed out on and because the performers are clearly more than up to the task, making good with the meagre scraps they’re given.
Despite it’s minor failings, Centurion once again show’s Neil Marshall up for the talented director he is and gives our own Michael Fassbender ample opportunity to flex his leading man muscles. Good stuff.
Say what you want about Christina Ricci but the actress, while a little funny looking and as mad as a hat full of badgers, is a bloody brave performer.
While she’s appeared in a few clangers in her time, the former child star is never anything less than interesting in her choice of projects and After.Life is just such an endevour.
She stars as teacher Anna Taylor who may or may not be dead. After a car crash she wakes up (or does she?) on the slab of creepy funeral home director Eliot Deacon (Liam Neeson). Despite her reluctance to accept her condition, Deacon insists that she is dead and her consciousness is simply in the process of “letting go”.
Similarly unable to accept Anna’s death is her finance, Paul (Justin Long), who blames himself for the accident and veers between booze-addled anger and thinking he’s going nuts to believe his lover is still alive.
The film raises a interesting question – if someone tells you you’re dead, should you believe them? How would you know? (Don’t dwell on that too long, one of the film’s weaknesses is that it requires a healthy does of willing suspension of disbelief for the sense of mounting horror to work).
Along with the appearance Justin Long, After.Life shares a few other similarities with Sam Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell.
There is a sense of impending dread that marks both films out as being a-typical Hollywood horrors; ambiguous morals (everyone’s kind of horrible and hard to root for) and they both focus on a girl who may or may not be driving herself nuts.
Ricci, Neeson and Long do excellent work with their lead roles and are ably assisted by creepy kid Chandler Canterbury.
There is something very cool about After.Life. Far from perfect, it takes an interesting idea and develops it well in a very small and controlled way.
There are a few loose ends not properly addressed and ideas that could have been explored more but overall there’s plenty here to chill the blood.