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Injured General Fights On
| Leisure by Arnold LeibrandtEven with an honourable discharge
The Eagle (2011) is an historic action-adventure set in Roman Britain during the second century. It is based on the novel The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff. The film follows Marcus Flavius Aquila (Channing Tatum), a Roman who arrives in Britain for his first mission as a commander to help the Romans take over Britain.
Marcus’s goal is to restore honour to his family name, which is disrespected by other soldiers due to the fact that Marcus’s father, who was a general twenty years ago, lost the golden eagle statue during battle.
The golden eagle is seen as a symbol of Roman honour, so the fact that Marcus’s father was killed and lost it in battle is a huge loss to Rome.
During his first battle in Britain Marcus fights valiantly and without remorse but becomes badly injured, and is therefore given an honourable discharge from the war.
Now that Marcus is no longer a soldier he feels the only way he can restore his family name is by retrieving the golden eagle from the British savage tribes.
He is accompanied on his new mission with his slave Eska (Jamie Bell), who gave Marcus his word that he would be his slave because Marcus previously saved his life.
However, on their journey through northern Britain Marcus becomes suspicious of Eska’s loyalty as Eska speaks the native language while Marcus does not, meaning Marcus doesn’t actually know what Eska is saying to the native people they come across.
Through their journey they come across a member of Marcus’s father’s squad who fled when they were attacked and lost the eagle and he tells them where the eagle is.
Apparently the eagle is held by the savage seal tribe of north Britain. When they come across the seal tribe Eska claims that Marcus is in fact his slave and suddenly the tables are turned, and Marcus has gone from being a Roman commander to a slave and he now feels what it feels like to be beaten and treated like dirt.
So it seems as if Eska has turned on his master, but Eska comes from a proud heritage of people who are known to keep their word, so this brings into question what is really going through Eska’s mind. And will Marcus be able to capture the eagle and bring it back to the Romans with a leg injury, no backup and no slave? You will just have to watch the film to find out.
On the whole the movie is generally quite good with plenty of action and patriot fight scenes, however, the middle period of the film [that sees Marcus and Eska searching for the Eagle] seems rather slow and dragged out with not much happening at all – other than two guys camping around in the forest – but then once they find the seal people tribe the pace of the film picks up and the viewer is again sucked into the intensity of the movie.
From an acting point of view Channing Tatum does a good job (and it is nice to see him doing a respectable role) but he is overshadowed by an even better performance from Jamie Bell.
Also from a technical point of view the editing, sound and music are superb and compliment the film beautifully.
For some strange reason the film sees a striking resemblance to the Lord of the Rings trilogy where two men go on a quest to find something, and there is even one scene that is completely identical to The Lord of the Rings (where the bad guys are looking for the good guys but the good guys are actually hiding directly underneath the bad guys).
Starring: Channing Tatum, Jamie Bell, Donald Sutherland
Directed By: Kevin Macdonald
Rating: 3 out of 5
Source: www.bizpremises.co.za
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