We Hate Hollywood

Written and directed by Neil Marshall
Starring Michael Fassbender, Dominic West, Olga Kurylenko, David Morrissey, Noel Clarke, Riz Ahmed, JJ Field, Liam Cunningham, Imogen Poots
Rated R for violence and profanity
Debuted on HDNet and is available in limited release
Rating - 2 bullet holes

Neil Marshall is no stranger to gore.  His first film, 2002’s Dog Soldiers, was a take on the werewolf genre that was actually pretty effective for a low budget film.  2005 put him on the map with The Descent, easily one of the best horror movies of the past 20 years.  He followed that up with 2008’s deliriously bloodied John Carpenter homage Doomsday.  Now he has rolled out Centurion, a blood-soaked Gladiator-ish epic featuring lots of swords, Romans, wolves, and his interpretation of what happened to the Ninth Legion.

The time is 117 A.D.  Rome is invading Britain and pushing northward.  Quintus Dias (Michael Fassbender - last seen in Inglourious Basterds), a centurion in the Roman army, is one of the few survivors of an attack at his garrison in Scottish Highland by Picts, a confederation of Celtic tribes who are fighting to push Rome out of their country.  He is taken prisoner, escapes, and meets up with the Ninth Legion led by General Titus Virilus (Dominic West of “The Wire”).  Virilus is beloved by his men, not a common characteristic of a Roman general.  When the Ninth Legion is the victim of a particularly savage ambush by Picts, a large majority of their force is killed and General Virilus is taken hostage.  Dias and six other men set out to rescue him.  Saving General Virilus if you will.

After that rescue attempt, the remaining men flee for their lives while being pursued by a band of Picts led by the tenacious Etain (Olga Kurylenko) who is mute and appears to have the soul of a rabid wolf.  All she lives for is spilling Roman blood.  In fact, 90% of Centurion is a chase movie.  And, on that level, it is pretty entertaining to watch these men sprint across beautiful landscapes (great helicopter cinematography from Sam McCurdy) while dodging the Picts, cliffs, and animals.

What bothers me about Centurion is that there is really nothing new here.  We’ve seen similar sword violence in Braveheart, Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, and countless other blood-soaked films.  We’ve seen similar pursuits in better films such as Apocalypto.  One element I do admire that is different here is who the protagonists are.  Here is the gigantic land-swallowing empire of Rome whose occupation force are the protagonists, and the home team are the villains.  I like how Dias begins to realize the folly of what his homeland is doing.  Marshall seems to be making some obvious correlations to the occupation of Iraq by America and his home country of England.

We also don’t get a real sense of these characters.  For a movie of this style to be truly effective, you need to feel a strong camaraderie between the protagonists.  It just isn’t here.

Another big gripe is the use of CGI blood.  I refuse to budge on this point about modern cinema.  If you can’t do CGI blood and make it look real, then stick to squibs.  CGI blood is killing action movies.  It works in something like 300 because that film was stylized and over the top intentionally.  But with something like Centurion, all the effects do is take me out of the moment and piss me off.

So, Centurion might be a decent rental.  Aside from the ridiculous blood effects, there is some serious carnage going on here that will give you action seekers a smile.

Directed by Sylvester Stallone
Written by David Callaham and Sylvester Stallone
Starring Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, David Zayas, Giselle Itie, Charisma Carpenter, Gary Daniels, Terry Crews, Mickey Rourke, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis
Rated R for violence and profanity
Rating - 3 bullet holes

In a recent online interview promoting The Expendables, Sylvester Stallone said the following about the genre that has been his bread and butter for most of his career:

“Action films; past, present and future are really a device for maintaining modern mythology. In reality, evil quite often triumphs over good and its effects have devastating longevity. So I believe the action film supplies an outlet for optimism and the unwavering belief that heroes, under great physical threat, rise and vanquish the oppressors. I believe it’s a necessity that these sorts of modern day street fables continue to provide an example that perseverance and bravery prevail. Now, in THE EXPENDABLES, we tried to show, without being overbearing, that these men are misfits in society, yet still hunger to be useful, to triumph overwhelming odds, not for money, but to keep them feeling compassionate and alive. Because when one is a mercenary in any facet of life, because you do not have to be a mercenary with a gun, you could be a mercenary in any occupation, at the end of your life, you’re nothing but a hollow drum that no one wants to hear played. What’s important to me is if you can slip in a bit of spiritual taxonomy, spiritual signifiers that somehow touch a deeper cord than just violence, for example: sacrificing your life for the life of an innocent stranger, thus proving human dignity must prevail at all costs.”

It’s hard to argue against the notion that action films represent “an outlet for optimism and the unwavering belief that heroes, under great physical threat, rise and vanquish the oppressors”.  Think about some of the most popular action films that came out soon after 9/11 - Black Hawk Down, We Were Soldiers, The Bourne Identity.  There were some other action movies soon after that weren’t that good but still attracted crowds such as Schwarzenegger’s Collateral Damage.  With all of these films, I remember the evil that 9/11 represented being in my mind.  Watching those films…seeing these various evils vanquished (okay okay I’m not going to get political about it) was cathartic to me.

There is definitely an intrinsic desire in us to root and laugh during action films as we see evil get obliterated.  When our hopes sometime sag under the weight of reality, action films are a great outlet.  So why didn’t I feel this way during The Expendables?

After all, Stallone has assembled an impressive cast of former icons of 1980s brawn and the current stars of muscle cinema.  There is no shortage of testosterone or hubris here.  All of these guys are highly skilled at kicking ass.  Unfortunately, they are saddled with terrible dialogue and poorly directed action sequences.

In the above quote, Stallone says that they’ve tried to show that these men are “misfits in society”.  Fail.  For one thing, we never know very much about where these guys have come from or what they have done.  We get little glimpses through stories they tell, many of them cheesy and formulaic, but I never really a strong cohesion between them because I didn’t know who the hell they were.

The dialogue is bad.  I mean really bad.  Like forget-it-as-soon-as-you-hear-it bad.  At least give us those cheesy but awesome lines the heroes of the 80s used to utter before shooting a guy in the throat.  I can’t think of one quotable line from this movie.

The action in the film is seriously inconsistent.  Some scenes are well executed (especially when Stallone and Statham take to the skies and rain fire down on the evil island people) but many of them - particularly the closer hand to hand fighting and gun battles - are so disjointed and chaotic that they are hard to follow.  The action scenes play out as if the editor finally just gave up.  And with a high budget action movie, shouldn’t the special effects be better?  Several moments are so poorly green-screened that they took me out of the action.

Maybe the biggest problem is that there are no real stakes.  For a truly effective action movie, the stakes have to be  high.  Think of Die Hard.  Cop goes to a business party to reconnect with his estranged wife.  Terrorists take over the building.  His wife is taken as a hostage.  Add to that John McClane’s exasperation with local law enforcement and his glee with taking out the terrorists, and you have a character that the audience can bond with.

In The Expendables, Barney Ross (Stallone) and gang are tasked by a mystery man (Willis in a brief cameo) to take down a Central American dictator (David Zayas) on a fictional island that produces cocaine for a ruthless drug lord (Eric Roberts).  Barney’s competitor (an even briefer cameo by Arnold) passes on the job.  When things go south, and the general’s daughter becomes a hostage, Barney sees this as an opportunity.  An opportunity to, as Stallone puts it, “sacrifice your life for the life of an innocent stranger, thus proving human dignity must prevail at all costs”.  Okay that’s noble and all but really…those are the only stakes?  I think maybe with a better script and more fleshed out characters, this could actually be  an effective theme for an action film.  But, here it just kind of limps along.  There is no gravitas whatsoever.

And that title.  Why not look more deeply at why these guys call themselves expendable for crying out loud?  Outside of a couple of poorly delivered pieces of dialogue, I have no clue why these guys are such outsiders wanting redemption.  This leads to another big gripe of mine that I can’t get into without spoiling the film.

The film isn’t all bad.  If you want your bloody violence, you will get it.  The opening scene is one of the best as Barney and crew take on a group of Somali pirates.  Let’s just say that the pirates will not be joining us for the rest of their lives. While the action is poorly directed, there are some pretty funny moments of bad guys in red hats getting dispatched.  Ex-NFL player Terry Crews and his shotgun provide some of the most memorable scenes. But when you convene a group of action icons like this, you have got to bring your A game and deliver more.