“Centurion” (2010)
If there’s one thing British director Neil Marshall knows, it’s muck. His movies (like the beloved subterranean monster mash “The Descent“) and his television work (he famously directed the “Blackwater” episode of “Game of Thrones“) are positively lacquered in grime. The same is true for his underseen “Centurion,” in which Fassbender plays Quintus Dias, a centurion soldier who is part of the famous Ninth Legion, a Roman regiment that walked into the Scottish Highlands … and never returned. Fassbender is ostensibly the hero because he’s one of the only members of the Ninth Legion left alive, because he speaks the native Picts’ language, and for much of the movie the actor is covered in blood and mud, running of his life from the villainous natives (Olga Kurylenko plays a wonderfully bad-ass warrior). The actor’s skills aren’t exactly put to the test, since he’s almost exclusively asked to run around and chop people’s heads off (this is a straight-up B-movie genre exercise) although he does get to stretch a little bit when it comes to sequences he shares with Imogen Poots, who plays a young witch. In these scenes he’s allowed a certain amount of sensitivity and compassion, creating an unlikely alliance with a native that leads to a precarious sense of safety as the warrior considers a new life for himself amongst the natives. There are some dumb thrills to be had with the hyper-violent “Centurion,” but it was released around the same time as “The Eagle,” a movie that covers much of the same historical ground but has a nifty, boys-adventure novel feel (instead of the nearly pornographic levels of bloodshed in “Centurion”) and didn’t really find even the niche audience it was going for. It’s not Fassbender’s best movie or performance by a long shot, but it’s still worth watching, if only to see the actor’s action chops post-“300” but before he became one of the X-Men. [C+]
Honorable Mention
Recently Fassbender reteamed with director and ex-Beta Band-er John Maclean for a second short film, following 2009’s “Man on a Motorcycle.” The newer one, “Pitch Black Heist” is a very enjoyable 12-minute two-hander between Fassbender and Irish national treasure Liam Cunningham, and it augurs well for their next collaboration on the upcoming feature-length western, also to star Ben Mendelsohn and Kodi Smit-McPhee, called “Slow West.” For now, though, in case all this Fassbender talk has gotten you hot under the collar with no outlet till you can make it to the theater this evening, we’ll leave you with a small dose to tide you over in the shape of this 2003 Guinness commercial for Ireland:
— Jessica Kiang, Drew Taylor and Rodrigo Perez
