Saturday, 26 March 2011

FILM: The Eagle (dir: Kevin Macdonald, 2011)


"There's no medicine for that."
Can this really be from the same director who brought us The Last King Of Scotland? This is a tremendously dreary movie, hampered fatally by a cruelly weak script which sees the likes of Jamie Bell and Donald Sutherland struggle to make anything interesting of it and leaves even Channing Tatum to flounder. The story is simplistic and stretches credulity at every step, and the range of inappropriate accents on display is intriguing. After a promising opening with attacks on a Roman outpost, the combat scenes are shot in a disappointingly confused and unengaging manner. If you haven't given up long before, the final two lines of the film demonstrate the film's lack of identity and purpose - even the score sounds parodic at times. The Eagle shows some fine landscapes and the lead duo manage to convey some sense of the emerging bond between Roman master and Brit slave, but the film is a plodding and disappointing experience.

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