The Roman Empire. Aishwarya Rai. Fighting. The pre-publicity for The Last Legion practically writes itself, which is a double shame when you watch it and find out what a steaming pile of poop it actually is. This film has been on my to-watch list since it came out. After all, I thoroughly enjoyed the underrated King Arthur and this is really more of the same. A retooling of the Arthurian legend placing the great English king at the arse end of the Western Roman Empire, defending Britain against the hordes of Germanic tribes sweeping in to rape and pillage. Where King Arthur had a budget, effective and well-cast stars and a nicely serious and plausible plot, The Last Legion meanders around without much of an idea and provokes mirth rather than thought.
Where to begin with this savaging? Well, the first thing you notice is that Mr Darcy himself, Colin Firth, is our hero. Now I have nothing against Firth, he�s a fine actor, but he�s no merciless killing machine. The man looks like a city banker at a Renaissance fair. While he could have overcome these objections with some serious muscles and asskicking aplenty it gradually becomes clear that the director told him not to bother, that he�d fix all that in editing. More on that later. Bollywood actress and permanent hottie Aishwarya Rai is his love interest and partner-in-crime. While her English is better than I expected her acting is even worse. Lets face it, she�s a model not a thespian. Casting her in movies is like going back to the Eighties. It�s a slap in the face to anyone who takes cinema seriously. The supporting cast mostly suck, with Roman duo Thomas Sangster, playing a boy Emperor, and Ben Kingsley stand-outs in this field. I have no idea how Kingsley continues to act given that he's so consistently weak. His Oscar for Gandhi 26 years ago has gone a long way.
Director Doug Lefler, who had mostly directed campy television shows up to this point, must also share in the blame. He seems to have brought with him all the worst tics of the TV trade. The editing is atrocious throughout, with migraine-inducing and wholly unnecessary quickcuts aplenty. On no less than three occasions is a major character run through and killed off-screen. Either the budget wasn�t there or he was too lazy to film it. Ah, the budget. It�s low, very low. Despite a few notable names the special effects belong in the MST3K category. If you want to see exactly what I mean wait till the end when Kingsley's character Ambrosinus commands two fire catapults. The resulting balls of flame look like someone superimposed a burning piece of scrumped-up paper onto the screen.
Screenwriter Jez and Tom Butterworth also did a lousy job coming up with a plot that makes any sense. They also insult the audience�s intelligence repeatedly by blatantly altering historical facts to fit their own ideas. For instance, they change the date of Sangster�s character�s coronation back 16 years and set it in Rome, which at the time was no longer the capital city (it was Ravenna by that point). They also make Rai a Byzantine warrior, despite there being no evidence that the Eastern Roman Empire had any female soldiers at all. This is unforgivable, especially since the entire film is loosely based on a book of the same name by Valerio Massimo Manfredi. It was already pre-written! They just had to cut it to length and et voila, a movie. No wonder Firth looks so embarrassed all the time.
I wanted to like this film, much like I�ve wanted to like so many other recent historical epics. Some have been good, most not so much. The Last Legion places very close to the bottom of this pile. The similarities it shares with King Arthur could be forgiven if it had at least made a decent attempt itself. After all, studios frequently put identical ideas for films into production around the same time. But in this case it took the direct-to-DVD approach to filmmaking and expected the world to lap it up at the box office. That is a recipe for a well-deserved failure. I haven�t even mentioned the ludicrously unnecessary character of Vortgyn, the wedging in of the more mythic aspects of Arthurian legend (the part where Sangster throws Excalibur into a stone is particularly toe-curling) or the bizarrely out-of-place musical arrangements. There�s just too much to complain about already. Pure cack. |
