I had been planning to watch Centurion and write a review but Alex beat me to it and wrote one. After watching the movie, however, I am still compelled to write my own quasi review. Let me start off by saying that although the movie took place in Britain in A.D. 117 it might as well have taken place A.D. 2010 South America.
While watching this movie I kept noticing similarities between it and The Expendables. There were corny lines, secondary corny predicable plot twists, and tons of blood and gore, just like there were in The Expendables. Don’t get me wrong both were movies I enjoyed watching and would see again, its just that they had similar qualities that made me feel as though I was watching an ancient version of The Expendables. In my opinion the one-liners in The Expendables are superior to those in Centurion, as were the plot twists and blood and gore. That sort of thing is expected when you compare a box office hit to a secondary grade movie. Plus, A12 automatic shotgun in the hands of Hale Caesar (Terry Crews) versus a sword in the hands of Quintus Dias (Michael Fssbender), I think the modern version wins every time.
I want to point out that the similarities are just that. For me when watching the movie you can see how they relate to aspects in the expendables but they’re not dead on the same exact type of thing just transported back a few thousand years. For example, a small group of trained military trained guys largely outnumbered fighting for their lives occurs in both movies. The big difference is that part of that group die in Centurion and in The Expendables they all live. Also you never get the sense in The Expendables that they’ll fail or that any of them will die, whereas in Centurion you get the sense that someone will die and that they may fail their mission. I think that aspect leads to a better overall plot line in Centurion that the Expendables but again that’s expected because The Expendables is just a over the top, ridiculous, chest hair growing movie.
Before I end this quasi-review, I wanted to touch on two aspects not touched on in Alex’s review. Firstly, the writer and director Neil Marshall continues in my opinion his line of overly bloody and gory movies that without their good plot twists here and there and descent story line would not be worth seeing. For those of you that have seen the Descent Movies or Doomsday you know exactly l what I mean. One other interesting trend with his movies is that the main character or one of the manin characters in the Descent Movies and in Centurion get screwed at the end which personally adds to the movies enjoyment. The other part I wanted to mention is that this isn’t Michael Fassbenders first trip back in time. Some of you might remember him as the long haired Stelios in the 300 or as Lt. Archie Hicox in Inglorious Bastards. Its seems as though Fassbender portraying a soldier isn’t something new to him and I can’t say that I’d be opposed to seeing more of them.
Anyway, let me know if you see what I did in the comments below.
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