The Last Legion: good concept, awful, awful, awful execution
Not too long ago, I rented both movies that recently came out that dealt with the mystery of the 9th Legion and how they disappeared. Centurion was bizarrely anachronistic, but fun, and The Eagle was...well, not really fun, but at least it had a pretty decent sense of pacing and drama.
So, having mostly enjoyed myself, I decided to give The Last Legion a try, a tale directed by the second unit director of Army of Darkness (Doug Lefler), starring Colin Firth, Kevin McKidd, Ben Kingsley, Aishwarya Rai, and some blond kid. I was interested, because I heard that this film combined the legends about the disappearance of the 9th with the Arthurian legends, setting the 9th as the setting under which the legends were born. As in, an alternate, better thought-out version of King Arthur (which, for the record, could have been awesome but for a lamentable script).
That is not what I got.
The story made sense, with some actual research having been put in (kind of). This version of the story moves the 9th's disappearance forward by about 300 years, and makes it about the last deposed Western Emperor (the blond kid) Romulus Augustus Caesar being exiled to Brittania with his bodyguard Aurelius (Firth), his teacher (Kingsley), an assassin of the Eastern Empire (Rai), all while being chased by a pissed-off Visigoth (McKidd). They're heading to Brittania to hook up with the 9th Legion, hoping that will give them enough of an army to start taking the Roman Empire back.
This would be fine, except that the Doug Lefler has no clue how to actually direct things. The acting itself if not bad; all the main cast are passable if not exactly stretching. Firth is convincing as a tired centurion far from home, McKidd chewed scenery with gusto, Aishwarya Rai easily held her own (and in the most non-chauvinist way I can possibly manage in this case...damn, girl), and Ben Kingsley at least looked like he was having a little fun. It's just that the script didn't make any goddam sense, the characterization was all over the place, and pace got lost in the first minute and never found the way back.
Also, pet peeve didn't help that the fight choreography was atrocious. Rai was pretty far from the worst action girl I've ever seen, and she's fairly tall for a woman (5' 7"), but cross-blocking a downward strike from an iron maul with a katar looks ri-damn-diculous no matter who you are, especially when said maul is being wielded by the 6' 2" James Cosmo, who looks like he's been mainlining HGH ever since Braveheart. It would have been something if they played up the absurdity every time, but they played it 100% serious.
It's like Lefler took the Michael Bay approach to films, subtracted all the gratuitous action, over-acting, cheesecake (comparatively, anyways), beefcake, whatevercake, and replaced it with nothing. There is literally no sense of pacing, or momentum, or emotion, or even progression to this film. Every single moment where you should be feeling some sense of connection...nothing. He would have been better off copying Michael Bay. Bay might be a horrible director of horrible blockbuster schlock, but he's at least capable of recognizing when moments are supposed to connect somehow to the audience. His moments might be filled with 5-minute-long, slow-motion explosions featuring running pecs and mysteriously-disappearing bras, but that's at least something. This was just a whole lot of nothing.
So, having mostly enjoyed myself, I decided to give The Last Legion a try, a tale directed by the second unit director of Army of Darkness (Doug Lefler), starring Colin Firth, Kevin McKidd, Ben Kingsley, Aishwarya Rai, and some blond kid. I was interested, because I heard that this film combined the legends about the disappearance of the 9th with the Arthurian legends, setting the 9th as the setting under which the legends were born. As in, an alternate, better thought-out version of King Arthur (which, for the record, could have been awesome but for a lamentable script).
That is not what I got.
The story made sense, with some actual research having been put in (kind of). This version of the story moves the 9th's disappearance forward by about 300 years, and makes it about the last deposed Western Emperor (the blond kid) Romulus Augustus Caesar being exiled to Brittania with his bodyguard Aurelius (Firth), his teacher (Kingsley), an assassin of the Eastern Empire (Rai), all while being chased by a pissed-off Visigoth (McKidd). They're heading to Brittania to hook up with the 9th Legion, hoping that will give them enough of an army to start taking the Roman Empire back.
This would be fine, except that the Doug Lefler has no clue how to actually direct things. The acting itself if not bad; all the main cast are passable if not exactly stretching. Firth is convincing as a tired centurion far from home, McKidd chewed scenery with gusto, Aishwarya Rai easily held her own (and in the most non-chauvinist way I can possibly manage in this case...damn, girl), and Ben Kingsley at least looked like he was having a little fun. It's just that the script didn't make any goddam sense, the characterization was all over the place, and pace got lost in the first minute and never found the way back.
Also, pet peeve didn't help that the fight choreography was atrocious. Rai was pretty far from the worst action girl I've ever seen, and she's fairly tall for a woman (5' 7"), but cross-blocking a downward strike from an iron maul with a katar looks ri-damn-diculous no matter who you are, especially when said maul is being wielded by the 6' 2" James Cosmo, who looks like he's been mainlining HGH ever since Braveheart. It would have been something if they played up the absurdity every time, but they played it 100% serious.
It's like Lefler took the Michael Bay approach to films, subtracted all the gratuitous action, over-acting, cheesecake (comparatively, anyways), beefcake, whatevercake, and replaced it with nothing. There is literally no sense of pacing, or momentum, or emotion, or even progression to this film. Every single moment where you should be feeling some sense of connection...nothing. He would have been better off copying Michael Bay. Bay might be a horrible director of horrible blockbuster schlock, but he's at least capable of recognizing when moments are supposed to connect somehow to the audience. His moments might be filled with 5-minute-long, slow-motion explosions featuring running pecs and mysteriously-disappearing bras, but that's at least something. This was just a whole lot of nothing.