Centurion (2010)

Elevator Pitch: The Picts fighting the Romans in Caledonia kill the garrison of a fort, except for one man who makes it back to report. As a result he joins the Ninth Legion sent to the north to subdue the inhabitants, guided by the Pict female warrior Etain. She betrays the Romans and the legion is destroyed except for a few survivors and the general who is captured. Trying to rescue the general they accidentally kill the Pict chief’s son, and as a result are hunted relentlessly over the hostile landscape. Can any of them survive?

Content: No sex or nudity, and just one kiss. A bit of drinking, but mainly unremitting violence as the fort is attacked, the legion is crushed and the survivors run across the landscape, occasionally engaging in sword fights with the pursuers. Etain is particularly bad-ass to the point that when she appears you know she is going to kill someone. There are limbs hacked off, people decapitated, shot with arrows and pierced with javlins. The landscape, apparently mostly in Scotland, is impressive.

A View: This film had an extremely moderate budget but still did not make its money back, even though it got a 50% approval from Rotten Tomatoes. Perhaps this was down to a lack of publicity. I did not enjoy it and since it was a recording I was able to take a break from the bloodshed. There is probably only so much you can do with people running across a barren waste, so maybe a watch for nothing while doing something else.

Additional Info: In this film and many others it has been necessary for the horse riders to be given stirrups, although they did not become common in Europe until the eighth or ninth century, it is also unlikely that the bows used in the film were available in the 2nd Century.