The Last Legion [DVD]

Boasting more historical inaccuracies than if it had been made by the production team of My Parents Are Aliens but adapted from a story partly written by noted historical author Valerio Manfredi The Last Legion is the latest film to tie in the King Arthur mythology with the Romans occupying Britannia in the 5th century . It sure goes about it in a convoluted way though.
It's 460A.D.and Rome is on the verge of falling to the Goths whose leader Odoacer( Peter Mullan) looks like Hagar The Horrible .Young Emperor to be Romulus Augustus(Thomas Sangster), rumoured to be blood relative of Caesar( Ehhh!!) is crowned just before the invasion hordes take the city and is thus a prize capture for them. Once this is done Odoacer charges his vicious soldier Wulfila(Kevin Mckidd) to take the lad to a remote virtually impregnable fortress , though he does allow mysterious sage come magician Ambrosinus (Ben Kingsley) to act as the lads companion which on reflection he may have come to regret.
They are then pursued by commander of the Legions Aurelios (Colin Firth) , some of his men , and an Ottoman warrior Mira (Aishwarya Rai) who is there because of her empires allegiance to Rome , but more probably because she is incredibly attractive and gives the film some love interest.
The action eventually moves to Britannia so the renegades can hook up with the ninth legion -the last in the empire. Here a masked villain called Vortgyn( Harry Van Gorkum) enters the fray because he has some connection to Ambrosinus and the whole thing is resolved with a big battle and it's after this that the film finally reveals it's hand and makes the connections to the Arthurian legend.
The Last Legion is directed by Doug Lefler who has worked on " Xena Warrior Princess" so his incompetence at directing action scenes comes as a surprise. He employs an annoying cinematic device of showing actors response to violence , no doubt to get the film a more family friendly rating . Unfortunately this had the side effect of making me swear vociferously every time it happened so it wasn't that child friendly after all. The action is unconvincing and badly edited but somehow it doesn't stop the film from being an enjoyable unchallenging romp. It is not helped in this regard by some truly excruciatingly bad dialogue , for which the writers Jez and Tom Butterworth should be ashamed. and some poor acting .McKidd overdoes the slavering lunatic role , Firth plays Aurelios as Mr Darcy with a big sword and Van Gorkum is one of the weediest villains in movie history . Ben Kingsley adds gravitas , though his accent veers about like a hippo on a skateboard, and James Cosmo, Peter Mullan , Owen Teale , Alexander Siddig all perform fine supporting roles while Thomas Sangster is decent enough. Aishwarya Rai is arguably the best thing in the movie , though I will confess to a certain libidinous bias there.
Taking into account the mis-casting of the principle hero, the god-awful script, lacksidasical direction and the baffling and numerous examples of historical erroneousness The Last Legion should be a complete disaster . But somehow it emerges as a good looking diverting action filled event . It's complete nonsense but it's never dull .Call me as shallow as a puddle of worm pee but I for one would rather watch entertaining nonsense than tedious art. How they managed to turn the constituent parts of The Last Legion into a passable movie is a feat of alchemy worthy of Merlin himself.

Does a film have to be historically correct to be good? Or can a film still succeed with not many real facts in it? The Last Legion is about the fall of Rome and the birth of a legend. It starts of with a young boy Romulus. He is destined to be the ruler of Rome. But once he becomes Emperor his city crumbles under the invasion of the Goths. He's then forced to run with only bodyguards as protection to Britain. There are quite a few great battle scenes. The history of the movie may be suspect but in this case that doesn't really matter. It's there for entertainment not education. So while it is historically incorrect it's still an epic film for anyone over 12 to watch.

I think this is a great 'fantasy' film. I say this as some are nit picking about the lack of historical fact. If it followed facts there would be no film at all, thats the whole point of the film, a good yarn!
And a damn good one at that. Gladiator is another example, not much fact but a great film. As for realism, Romulas, Vortkin, the Goths, the Eastern Empire, Hadrians Wall, all there for some realism. And a great stirring sound track.