The Eagle (of The Ninth)

It is said that this film’s title was changed to simply “The Eagle” to avoid confusing American audiences into thinking it was about golf. Any misapprehensions one might have about the film’s subject matter are soon dispelled as a boat of Roman soldiers is seen being paddled stealthily along a tree-lined river in Britain in the second century AD. I suppose they could just have been looking for a lost ball.

When I heard that this film, directed by the Scot Kevin Macdonald (“The Last King of Scotland”, “Touching the Void”...) was based upon Rosemary Sutcliff’s popular teenage fiction classic “The Eagle of the Ninth” (1954) and furthermore starred Jamie Bell (Billy Elliott) and the incomparable Donald Sutherland, I was keen to see it. Disappointment set in almost immediately. The film is exquisitely shot against impressive locations, the production values are very high, the Roman villas, forts, costumes and the wonderfully wild Britons are extremely convincing, the music score evocative until the end when the Gaelic pipes begin to grate, but most of the acting and script are truly dreadful.

Marcus Flavius Aquila (get it?) played by Channing Tatum, a young Roman centurion arrives in Britain in 120 AD for his first command, but with the real intention of rescuing the Eagle, the standard of the ninth legion, which his father commanded and was lost in battle with the Ancient Britons. Aquila’s father was killed in that battle and his son’s mission is to find the emblem and bring it back to civilisation thus restoring the honour of the family name. Severely but gloriously wounded in battle, whilst recuperating, he saves the life of a British slave Esca (Jamie Bell) and the debt of honour thus incurred obliges Esca to serve Aquila and help him in his quest beyond the boundaries of civilisation (aka Hadrian’s Wall) to find the Eagle and rescue it from the clutches of the picturesque Seal People (Picts?) in the Highlands. After many adventures, meeting up with an ex-Roman legionary gone native and AWOL, capture by the Seal People and an interesting role reversal when to avoid death Aquila has to appear to be Esca’s slave, they miraculously find the Eagle and in the face of extreme hardship, bring it back to Roman Britain and glory.
It may be a personal failing of mine, but having Roman soldiers played by American actors was an immediate turn-off. Listening to the Kevin Macdonald on BBC radio, it is clear that this was a deliberate central conceit, thus drawing parallels between the Roman Empire and its modern American counterpart (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) and through showing the Britons as slaves, inverting the later historical emergence of the British Empire. While watching the film I was aware of the lack of any female character, but took it to be part of the boys’ own era of adventure story-telling that Sutcliff’s novel came from in the 1950s. But no, apparently there is an overlay of homo-eroticism in the relationship between Aquila and Esca. That interpretation completely eluded me I have to admit.

There are good bits: the Seal people, having been described as the most barbarous of savages are shown to have a settled, ordered village and family life – that is until the Prince slits the throat of his little son for betraying them. Also we are invited to reflect upon the savagery which the Romans themselves inflicted upon the indigenous peoples. These points are well made, but with its obvious and deliberate American overlay which makes one think of “The Deer Hunter,” “ Apocalypse Now,” even “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” the film fails to convince. It is severely hindered by a poor script full of banalities key points unexplained and some very wooden acting by Mr Tatum.

Overall I was glad when it finished and the ending, with the two protagonists walking away considering their next move makes one squirm and groan inwardly “not a sequel surely....”