Film Review: Last Legion

I took a film analy­sis course in the autumn of 2007, for which I had to write a num­ber of films reviews. As I’m sort­ing through my 320gig hard drive which ran out of space this week, I’ll be post­ing those reviews here. Why not?

Here’s the pitch: take advan­tage of the crit­i­cal suc­cess of Gladiator and the hype of the more recent 300 by drop­ping the ready-made plot of Arthurian leg­end into the Roman Empire. Toss in the dig­ni­fied Ben Kingsley as the most notable wiz­ard of quasi-history, put Mr. Darcy him­self, Colin Firth, in a suit of Roman stud­ded leather, and for that extra touch of intrigue cast Aishwarya Rai as the Bollywood Xena. Production company’s ticket-selling dream and the audience’s popcorn-chomping epic of the year. Right? Wrong.

The Last Legion is a lack­lus­ter expe­ri­ence which limps along upon a tal­ented cast forced to serve as a mere crutch and moti­vated by the flick­er­ing shine of a should-have-been bril­liant idea.

Romulus, blandly played by Thomas Sangster aka That Precocious Kid from Love Actually, is the young last emperor of Rome upon whom all hope for civ­i­liza­tion seem­ingly rests. His guide is Kingsley’s Ambrosinius, a mys­te­ri­ous scholar with a tal­ent for tricks and a well-used bat­tle staff. Aurelius, a Roman General por­trayed by Firth, is assigned to the pro­tec­tion of his young new emperor. The trio quickly finds their world torn asun­der as Rome is con­quered, and thus begins their acci­den­tal yet inevitable quest for a fabled sword and last loyal legion of the Roman Empire. Joining their quest is Rai as a beau­ti­ful mar­tial artist from India and the Eastern Empire.

The leg­end of King Arthur and the sword Excalibur is a tale of epic pro­por­tions, and its pre­quel, as The Last Legion is pur­ported to be, must be of equal stature and glory. Glory, how­ever, is pre­cisely what The Last Legion lacks. At no point is the audi­ence invited to under­stand why this child emperor, this Caesar, is worth the mas­sive bat­tle. Sure, he’s a cute kid and he doesn’t deserve death, but is that really enough on which to stake two hours of adven­ture? Not even the Sword of Caesar, more com­monly known as Excalibur, or the pow­er­ful Kingsley dressed up as a finely-veiled Merlin are able to cap­ture the imag­i­na­tion and spirit of an eager audience.

The direc­tion of Doug Lefler does achieve one feat: Lefler man­ages to make the grandiose land­scape of Britannia’s scal­ing cliffs and sparkling seas nearly as bland as Dorothy’s Kansas – before the color-changing tor­nado. Patrick Doyle, the pre­em­i­nent com­poser mod­ern British cin­ema, is seem­ingly ill used in this endeavor, as the sound­track is rarely of note and feels as if clips were ran­domly cho­sen from a dol­lar store disc of stock audio.

The Last Legion is not void of value. Indeed, the film is a mod­ern rar­ity in its com­bi­na­tion of a clev­erly cre­ative idea, a qual­ity cast, and the abil­ity to be safely shown to and enjoyed by chil­dren and adults of any age. These excel­lent qual­i­ties are pre­cisely what make the over­whelm­ing fail­ure to excite and inspire so very dis­ap­point­ing. The Last Legion deserves more – per­haps we can con­vince Peter Jackson and his awe-inspiring ilk into a do-over more wor­thy of Arthurian Legend.