Centurion Reviews
Top CriticAuteur cinema of a very narrow stripe, this personalizes a familiar genre to advance a singularly pessimistic view of humanity.
Centurion wraps itself in talk of duty and honor, but really it's just another cinematic death-trip.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
Marshall is big on desaturated imagery, which imparts to the film's copious amounts of hemoglobin the look of squid ink.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
The film has a resigned bitterness, hard to shake off, that feels right for the experience of tough guys, from whatever period of history, who find themselves at the tattered edge of what they take to be civilization.
Marshall shows off the breathtaking landscape, but with interiors, he populates the ale houses and encampments with cliches.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Unpretentious swords-and-sandals film crafts a tight survival drama out of Roman Empire lore.
There are, by my count, six standard types of violence in film these days: Tarantino, comic book, Scorsese, martial arts, horror and stupid. That's right: stupid. For an example, look no further than Centurion.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Far more entertaining, and infinitely less cumbersome, than its recent big-budget Hollywood counterparts.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
For all its analogies to Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, or wherever, the underlying thrust of Centurion is its celebration of bloodlust.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Sack, pillage, repeat. Heads will roll. And bounce. And be stuck on pikes.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Occasionally Marshall provides a back story to fill out a role, but too often that's how it comes off: as filler.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
By turns heroic, fearsome, funny, fateful and, oh, so brutal, with swords hacking off heads at every turn.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
Flaming arrows, spears, and knives have no problem finding their way to the back of a mouth. The profanity is delightful. And the general atmosphere is grim. The movie just isn't terribly inspired.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
It offers riveting storytelling, gorgeous cinematography and scenery, loads of gore, and a politically complicated history lesson.
No one can claim the bloodshed was toned down in the quest for a PG-13 -- and I consider that to be a positive quality.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Most of the characters are so characterless that you can't tell who they are when they get impaled or beheaded, and you can't remember who they used to be after they're dispatched. Not that it matters.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
When it comes to crunchy impalings and messy arterial geysers, Marshall's a maestro.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
It's prime B-movie material put through the Ridley Scott Cuisinart.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
[A] highly enjoyable action-adventure.
No amount of relentless forward momentum, head-smacking violence or CGI-enhanced blood-letting can disguise the anaemic characterisation and obvious contrivances.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
