Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
2/23/11
It's
hard to make a great movie, but it's equally hard to take the resources
of a studio and churn out something truly inert. Usually, some kind
of entertainment value slips through, or at least the whole affair is so
terrible one gets the giggles and has a perverse anti-enjoyment of what
they're watching. I can report no such luck with The Eagle,
Kevin Macdonald's Roman Epic On The Cheap most noteworthy for being more
patriotic for a country/empire that no longer exists than just about any
movie I can think of. The Eagle isn't poorly acted so much
as its performances uniformly fail to make an impression. It's not
so much badly plotted as that it's barely plotted at all: remarkably
little happens in virtually two hours of screen time. It IS ideologically
confused to the point of corkscrewing itself into the ground by the end
of its running time, but that's only going to matter to you if you've been
bored to the edge of a coma by the rest of what's going on and forced to
latch onto analyzing the film's worldview in a desperate attempt to stay
awake long enough to leave. If you're all about this sort of Roman
thing or a really big fan of Channing Tatum, I suppose The Eagle might
prove adequate to your completist needs. Otherwise, I highly advise
you to stay far, far away from this long winter's nap.
Rome's
Ninth Legion vanished in British territory, inspiring the construction
of Hadrian's Wall and leaving the son of its shamed leader to hide in shame
in a remote command. He's Marcus Aquila (Channing Tatum), and after
a courageous stand leaves him wounded and honorably discharged, he helps
to save a doomed slave named Esca (Jamie Bell) from the arena, and his
Uncle (Donald Sutherland) purchases the captured Briton to be Marcus' slave.
Not only did Marcus' father disappear with an entire Legion, he also lost
its Eagle Standard, a golden statue that's the symbol of Roman power.
To restore the family honor, Marcus latches onto rumors of the Standard
being sighted on the other side of the wall to embark with Esca on a mission
to track it down. Soon, both men have fallen into the clutches of
The Seal People, a British tribe fascinated by Esca's story of having his
own Roman slave. But if they learn the truth, both men will be dead
long before they lay hands on the elusive Eagle.
The
first thing you'll notice about The Eagle is why movies traditionally
have their International casts all affect English accents while speaking
English in Ancient Rome: because American accents sound really silly.
Not just that, they encourage a contemporary acting style that far too
many of The Eagle's legions indulge. Denis O'Hare, an actor
of whom I'm ordinarily very fond, seems to have just gotten back from Starbucks
in the movie's opening scene, and it's all downhill from there. I
root for Channing Tatum, I really do, because in supporting roles under
the tutelage of elite directors in Public
Enemies, The Dilemma and especially Stop-Loss,
he has shown some real chops over the last few years. But I've yet
to see him in a leading role where he could command the screen as a movie's
star is required to, and while he tries harder and has more success than
anyone else with the posture and gravity of demeanor required of
The Eagle's characters, Marcus is ultimately just a boring guy to
spend two hours with. Bell doesn't have a lot more luck: he's
certainly convincingly beaten-down by his hard lot in life, but he couldn't
get me to buy into a character who's designed to keep you guessing about
his loyalties, in part because no matter what he's doing, he just always
seems kinda sad.
Of
course, the problem with Esca is much deeper than the actor playing him:
the role, like much of The Eagle, is just this far on the uninteresting
side of ridiculous. The scene where Marcus saves him by rallying
a gladiatorial crowd to give him the thumbs-up instead of their preferred
thumbs-down is pitifully uninspiring, as people's minds are rarely changed
by a guy yelling “You fools!” at them over and over. And what you
might call loyalty on his part after that improbable save, I prefer to
think of as Noble Savage nonsense: until the movie's final moment,
seemingly attached after test audiences said “Gee, I thought somebody was
gonna smile in this movie,” he really shows no character traits other than
being bummed about Rome and, uh, slavishly devoted to his owner.
Which
got me thinking, as I mentioned above primarily as a defense mechanism
to ward off falling asleep at the movies for the first time in my life,
about The Eagle's peculiar stand on slavery and savages. Were
Esca African-American (or African-Briton, as the case may be), audiences
would be burning down theaters screening The Eagle with its outdated
view of forced servitude as somehow noble and chivalrous. And the
Britons themselves couldn't be more cartoonishly Evil Savages, daring to
treat Marcus with such disrespect unbecoming a Roman even before they slit
a child's throat off-screen (in total silence, no doubt as a concession
to the MPAA, that had me picturing Macdonald screaming “Where the hell's
my Foley?!?”). As their fearless leader, Ned Dennehy seems relentlessly
drunk even before the dreaded peyote (or whatever Seal People get high
on) sequence. Once in a while, the movie seems to get a telegram
informing it the year is 2011, not 1951, and so Marcus will make a random
comment about the courage of his adversaries, and a climactic bit where
he pays tribute to the fallen on both sides comes so out of left field
it's almost good for a laugh.
What
most hinders The Eagle's efforts to entertain is that it's really
not about anything an audience can get behind. Yeah, it's a bummer
Marcus' pop perished in battle, but he WAS trying to invade somebody else's
country. And I can't really say I care about who ends up with a hunk
of metal that's the symbol of an empire more than a millennium past its
expiration date. You'd think the movie would have wisely excised
the exchange where Marcus proudly says that wherever The Eagle goes, it
says “Rome did this” and Esca informs him that when his family was raped
and murdered and he enslaved, Rome did that too if it expected us to think
all the newly minted orphans and widows created by the climax will be really
happy that at least We got The Eagle back. In that sense, the focus on
a single, selfish character at the expense of larger societal issues is
nothing new to Macdonald: it was the same issue that made me unable
to get behind The Last King of Scotland,
although at least that movie had some really great acting in it, and issues
with its ethical bottom line also drain a lot of the fun from State
of Play in its closing scenes.
Did
I mention that Mark Strong looks rather embarrassed beneath some ill-considered
facial hair? Yeah, this is that kind of movie. Pretty much
nothing goes right during The Eagle, not even the hope that things
would go wrong enough to be a lot of fun. Instead, it's just a slog,
a cinematic quagmire that tested my lifelong record of having never walked
out of a movie before it was over. Yes, I admit I went to the bathroom
during the peyote scene (which was STILL GOING ON when I got back!), but
I stuck to my vow, a triumph at least as rousing as bringing that damn
bird statue back to Rome. |
