While not a battlefield epic, The Eagle has plenty of bloody action

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      Starring Channing Tatum, Jamie Bell, and Donald Sutherland. Rated PG.

      It is pretty weird hearing Romans speak with North American accents in the absorbing adventure saga The Eagle. When Channing Tatum’s centurion arrives at the outpost he’ll be commanding in Britain, Denis O’Hare, playing his second-in-command, greets him like they’re about to hit the La-Z-Boys with a couple of Buds and the remote. British actors usually play Romans, right? This time the Brits are occupied playing themselves and having a serious hate-on for their sandal-clad invaders.


      Watch the trailer for The Eagle.

      Luckily, director Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland) quickly distracts with a little of the old ultraviolence when longhaired locals attack the fort and the Romans go into those cool fighting formations that are always so transfixing.

      But this is a quest tale (based on Rosemary Sutcliff’s popular 1954 teen historical novel The Eagle of the Ninth), not a battlefield epic—although, don’t worry, there’s still bloody action aplenty. Marcus is actually bent on solving the mystery of the Ninth Legion, led by his father, that vanished 20 years before, along with its golden-eagle standard. After recuperating from injury at the lakeside villa of his uncle (a laid-back Donald Sutherland), he heads out into dangerous terrain and into the story’s more entertaining half.

      Part of what works is Jamie Bell playing Esca, a Brit slave Marcus rescues from the gladiatorial ring and his sole companion on his mad mission. Simultaneously grateful and pissed off, Esca is rather more interesting than the single-minded Marcus, and Bell’s acting chops add to the relationship’s earnest charm.

      The Eagle’s other stars are the stunning yet clearly hellish northern Scotland landscape and the hostile tribes that occupy it. Even caught up in this engrossing adventure, you seriously wonder why the real Romans wanted to be there. And who can blame the people who were there first for feeling a tad murderous toward the new guys?

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