Having its release pushed back to avoid Centurion and its title changed from The Eagle of the Ninth because someone in market research thought it sounded like a golf picture, Kevin MacDonald's The Eagle didn't find much luck at the box-office, which is a shame because this adaptation of Rosemary Sutcliff's much-loved Roman novel is a terrific and almost entirely satisfy old-school adventure story. Channing Tatum is the centurion who asks for a post at the very edge of the empire on the Scottish border in hopes of covering his family name with so much honor and glory it'll drown out the shame that has attached itself to it since his father led the Ninth Legion to an unknown fate north of what would become Hadrian's Wall. Despite getting off to a good start by winning over his men and saving his fortress from attack not once but twice, his career is over almost as soon as its begun when he is invalided out of the legion. Recuperating at his uncle Donald Sutherland's villa where he saves the life of a British slave (Jamie Bell), he sees a chance to challenge fate and redeem the family's honor when rumors start that the Eagle standard of the Ninth Legion have been seen beyond the wall...
Andrew MacDonald's film is very much a classic old-fashioned adventure film seen through modern eyes but managing to avoid many of the clichés of the genre, old and new. It reverses the classic casting approach by almost entirely using American actors instead of British ones for the Romans (with the exception of Mark Strong's Dennis Hopper-like legionary gone native), a conceit which works surprisingly well. Aside from a misjudged shot of a ranting druid and a brief fight with some rogue warriors it avoids the excesses of shakeycam and overediting for a smoother visual approach to the action scenes, the desaturated photography managing to turn the Hungarian and Scottish locations into something that looks almost like a lost world while just managing to avoid the tiresome orange and teal visual clichés of most modern action films. There's even a nicely imaginative use of sound in the climax when the sounds of the final battle are reduced not to the usual silence and soaring orchestral chords but those of the two central combatants in a sequence where the audio briefly becomes more impressive than the visuals. Much of the big action is at the front of the picture, slightly unbalancing it for those hoping for the kind of big action movie it seems to start out as, the scale shrinking as the focus narrows and the landscape conversely expands, but it never feels like its dragging its heels or padding things out.
The film initially manages to give a good sense of how the ancient Roman world worked without letting the details get in the way of the story before plunging into the dark savage world beyond the wall, where hard country breeds harsh tribes with more in common with Native Americans than the usual righteous oppressed locals fighting the empire for their freedom. Indeed, when the hero and his slave go on the run pursued by the relentless Mohican-like Seal People, you could easily be watching a Western. Yet even here the film manages to avoid falling into easy good guy-bad guy stereotyping, with Tahir Rahim excellent as their relentless nemesis, managing to create a believable and human character despite having little to work with. Nor does the film opt for an easy hero/villain position on Rome itself, choosing to stake its colors on heroism and courage on either side. Those expecting an epic or a relentless action movie may be disappointed, but as a large-scale old-fashioned adventure, all in all it's rather terrific.
The UK Blu-ray offers a decent 2.40:1 widescreen transfer, director's commentary, a perhaps slightly better alternate ending that gives the Eagle itself more value than the one finally used, a couple of deleted scenes (one explaining why Douglas Henshall gets prominent billing for just a couple of shots as a charioteer who Tatum kills: the rest of his part never made the final cut), a featurette and a more substantial 48-minute making of documentary that doesn't seem to have made the US release.
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Customer reviews
Top reviews from other countries
Trevor Willsmer
"The Eagle is not a piece of metal. The Eagle is Rome."
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 February 2012Verified Purchase
Elleppi
From King of Scotland to conquerors of Britain...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 September 2015Verified Purchase
R. Stewart
Good quality Bluray
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 March 2022Verified Purchase
brian johnson
great flim
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 November 2019Verified Purchase
Amazon Customer
Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 July 2018Verified Purchase
