Michael Ledo
This film is a me-too movie attempting to capitalize off the success of pseudo histories such as Robin Hood and Arthur. My first objection to the movie is the font they chose to write the subtitles, locations, and plot points. It was difficult to read on my analog TV, especially when they opt for white on a pale blue background using an ancient looking font that is difficult to decipher in the first place. Now the reason why we have subtitles is for the Picts, who are native of Northern Britain. They don't speak English, but the Romans speak 21st century English, including one soldier with a British accent. "Sorry mate, but orders are orders," he says as he slices a Pict throat. OH PLEASE! If the Picts don't speak modern English, don't try to make it realistic with subtitles only to have the Romans speak English. The language spoken by the Picts is actually unknown.A Roman governor wanting to make a name for himself, opts to send the 9th Roman legion into the Pict stronghold in order to kill their king. The Roman governor uses a female Pict slave (whose parents were murdered by Romans, with her being raped as a child and her tongue cut out) to guild them into Pict territory. Guess how that works out Scooby-Doo? The ninth legion is wiped out except for the general who is taken captive and 7 Romans (who look more like an international group). They opt to do the stupid thing and attempt to rescue the general in the heart of a Pict camp. After they fail at that, they are hunted by Picts. For those who like killing, blood, urine, and violence this is your film. The overly simplistic plot, lack of good characterization, making us identify with the bad guys who we know will lose, poor attempts at humor, makes this the least enjoyable of the pseudo histories to date. They spent a lot of money making this film and wasted it on an inferior script.The story of the missing ninth Roman legion being destroyed by the Picts is legend. It actually got transferred to Judea.
vandelour
There is nothing special about this movie at all. Zip. Average everything.. acting, direction, sets, cinematography, dialog
plot too. Its just a too-long story. I can't even call it confused as there isn't that much to it. Long, really long scenes of guys running through the mountains. Up the mountains. Down the mountains. Across the streams, around the trees. Some very bloody fighting filmed in such a way as to make it impossible to tell who was killing and who wasn't. Witches, mutes, little princes, Roman governors, bar fights
where is Kirk Douglas when he's really needed to give a movie some pizazz.
Jackson Booth-Millard
I knew this film was set during a time period full of men in armour with swords, I think that's about it really, I was up for giving it a go, directed by Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent). Basically in Roman Britain in the year AD 117, five years before the construction of Hadrian's Wall, Roman centurion Quintus Dias (Michael Fassbender) is the son of a legendary gladiator, and the sole survivor of a Pictish raid on a Roman frontier fort. Gnaeus Julius Agricola (Raiders of the Lost Ark's Paul Freeman), the Roman governor of Britannia, dispatches the Ninth Legion, legendary army of General Titus Flavius Virilus (Dominic West), to eradicate the Pictish threat and destroy their leader Gorlacon (Festen's Ulrich Thomsen), the legion marches north, they encounter and rescue Dias. The legion are ambushed on unfamiliar ground, Virilus is taken captive, Quintus and his small platoon face a desperate struggle to stay alive behind enemy lines, rescue the general and reach the safety of the Roman frontier. They are forced to endure harsh terrain and evade their remorseless Pict pursuers led by revenge- hungry Pict warrior Etain (Quantum of Solace's Olga Kurylenko), one by one the soldiers fall victim to the savagery of their enemy. In the end, to avoid criticism and other consequences, all records of the Ninth Legion are destroyed, so to this day nobody knows the full truth of what happened to them when they disappeared. Also starring Noel Clarke as Macros, Game of Thrones' Liam Cunningham as Brick, David Morrissey as Bothos, Four Lions' Rizwan Ahmed as Tarak, Imogen Poots as Arianne, JJ Feild as Thax, Dave Legeno as Vortix, Lee Ross as Septus, Ryan Atkinson as Gorlacon's Son and The Living Daylights' Andreas Wisniewski as Commander Gratus. I agree with critics that not a lot of effort went into making a really engrossing story and the characters are not that developed, so there is a slight lack of suspense and emotional involvement, but to be honest, I was paying much more attention to the fight and chase sequences, full of many violent and blood soaked deaths, overall it's an alright historical action thriller. Okay!
professorskridlov
It's silly. What did you expect? 10 lines of text on this would probably contain more substance than the movie. It's a low-budget chop-em-up sword and sandal effort. About as plausible as a Popeye cartoon with a load of portentous waffling about "honour" (as opposed to "honor") etc. That said it's more entertaining than watching emulsion paint dry and less painful than root canal treatment. It amazes me that people review this sort of meaningless light entertainment as if it bore the slightest relationship to the historical events or period which it's supposed to depict. That's "de-Pict" in this case. You've seen worse - whether you were aware of the fact I can't possibly know.
AD
