Capsule Film Reviews #62: The Eagle; Kill the Irishman.

The Eagle (2011)
Starring: Channing Tatum; Jamie Bell; Donald Sutherland; Mark Strong; Tahar Rahim; Denis O'Hare; Douglas Henshall.
Directed by: Kevin Macdonald.
Colour/115 Minutes/NR

An adaptation of Rosemary Sutcliff's book The Eagle of the Ninth (1954). Set in 140AD, twenty years after the famed Roman Ninth Spanish Legion was apparently lost in what is now present day Scotland. The son of the last eagle standard bearer of the Ninth -- a young centurion called Marcus Flavius Aquila (Channing Tatum) -- comes to Roman-ruled Britain to serve as a garrison commander. He has dreams of finding the standard and reclaiming it for Rome, restoring honour to his father's name. After Celtic tribesmen attack his garrison he proves himself in battle by winning the day, and is decorated as a hero, but he is badly injured and honorably discharged. Still, he is determined to go past Hadrian's Wall into the untamed Britain of the Picts, with only his British slave Esca (Jamie Bell) as his guide. But can Esca be trusted? The question is put to the test when the two encounter the very tribe of Picts who now hold the eagle standard. There is no solid evidence of the Ninth Legion's actual fate, but films like The Last Legion (2007) took the bare bones of the story and proposed connections between the Legion survivors and the roots of Arthurian legend. Neil Marshall's Centurion (2010) turns the aftermath of its destruction into a chase film for a handful of weary survivors and ends with a Roman political cover-up. Here the story is turned into a quest mixed with a more detailed look at the peoples and geography of that time. Here we touch on what the Celts and Picts may have been like, and we see the day-to-day toil of a Roman foot soldier defending the border of where the known world once ended. But central is the relationship between master and slave. The movie is a bit more of a slow burn than Centurion, but it too features well-done battle scenes, and it is thankfully light on CGI effects. Channing Tatum is sadly a bit wooden and uninteresting in the lead, and I had no interest in his quest. It was Jamie Bell's Esca, whose conflict of loyalty between his people and to his master, that really hit the right dramatic notes. This movie would also pair well with Centurion in a double feature. Good rental.

Kill the Irishman (2011)
Starring: Ray Stevenson; Vincent D'Onofrio; Val Kilmer; Christopher Walken; Linda Cardellini; Tony Darrow; Robert Davi; Fionnula Flanagan; Bob Gunton; Jason Butler Harner; Vinnie Jones; Tony Lo Bianco; Laura Ramsey.
Directed by: Jonathan Hensleigh.
Colour/106 Minutes/R

Adapted from the book To Kill the Irishman: The War That Crippled the Mafia (1998) by Rick Porrello. A direct-to-video, dramatised biopic of real life Irish gangster and FBI informant Danny Greene (Ray Stevenson), who rose quickly through the 1970s Cleveland underworld becoming both a mob boss and a legend with much of the local population as a Robin Hood type figure. The film follows him from his start in the shipyards, to union boss, mob enforcer, and rival of the Italian mobsters he once worked for. The film is briskly paced, and tries to echo the feel of films like Goodfellas and Heat. It manages to keep the viewer interested an unconfused, reminding me of how the two-part biopic of Jacques Mesrine (Mesrine: Part 1 - Killer Instinct; Mesrine: Part 2 - Public Enemy #1) managed to hold its narrative together despite events being glossed over, shown out of sync, or changed for dramatic purposes. The cast is solid, featuring a roll call of past A-listers, and character actors. Stevenson plays Greene larger than life (and indeed to some degree he was), without going over the top. It's nice to see Kilmer and other familiar faces in a DTV film worthy of their talents for once. The film paints Greene in a fairly positive light as a family man and local hero, arguing that his mob war, and his death by the hands of a mob hit man, led to the fall of both the Cleveland mafia and the Cosa Nostra throughout the USA. This is not to say that the film does not shy away from his dark side. He's also shown as being head strong, violent, bigoted, and self-destructive. The film suffers the most from its sometimes shoddy special effects and badly-written moments of sappy character stuff that feel like they were first intended for a TV movie. Not a bad rental.