Despite being directed by an Oscar-winning director, “The Eagle of the Ninth Legion” is not exactly a classic of the modern sandal film. Fans of hearty historical action should still enjoy it. Now available for subscription to Prime Video!
Thanks to the colossal success of “Gladiator” at the box office and at the Oscars, a small wave of films in this direction followed. One of its somewhat belated offshoots was “The Eagle of the Ninth Legion” in 2011 with the muscular “Magic Mike” star Channing Tatum, as always. The whole thing doesn’t come close to the original, but it should be a worthwhile pastime for fans of historical action adventures until “Gladiator 2” finally hits theaters in a few days.
“The Eagle of the Ninth Legion” is now available to all subscribers in the flat rate program Amazon Prime Video contain:
“The Eagle of the Ninth Legion” on Amazon Prime Video*
If you are an Amazon Prime customer, you can also watch the film there Stream at no additional cost*. All you have to do is register for the seven-day free trial of the Filmtastic channel. If you don’t want to cancel again, you will be charged 3.99 euros per month after the trial period.
In addition to Channing Tatum, there are a few other well-known stars there. You can expect Jamie Bell (“Rocketman”), Mark Strong (“Shazam! 1+2”), Taher Rahim (“Napoleon”) and Hollywood veteran Donald Sutherland from the “The Hunger Games” series, among others.
“The Eagle of the Ninth Legion”: That’s the story
The year is 140 AD: the Roman Empire is still in shock. The reason for this is the complete disappearance of the entire Ninth Legion over 20 years ago in Caledonia (today’s Scotland). 5,000 men went on the campaign, none of whom returned. Nobody knows what became of the soldiers, among whom was the father of the aspiring officer Marcus Aquila (Tatum).
LEONINE Be careful, man behind! Channing Tatum in The Eagle of the Ninth Legion.
Driven by the desire to clarify the fate of the Ninth Legion and to bring its standard, a gilded bronze eagle, back to Rome, Marcus has himself transferred to a small fortress in southwest Britain. With courage and military skill he wins the respect of his troops, but is seriously wounded during a mission. His superiors encourage him to resign from the army with glory and move to his uncle (Sutherland) in southern England.
Marcus reluctantly follows this recommendation, which – as he knows full well – is actually an order. At home he falls into a depression from which he only awakens when he hears that the missing eagle has been spotted in the north beyond Hadrian’s Wall…
Concessions regarding authenticity
In 2008, Kevin Macdonald, who won an Oscar for his documentary “One Day in September”, was commissioned to direct an astonishingly hard and bloody adaptation of the classic young adult book “The Eagle of the Ninth Legion” by Rosemary Sutcliff, which was rather harmless compared to the film. The “State Of Play” director planned to make his work as authentic as possible. He really wanted to film in the Scottish Highlands and the actors who played characters from the tribes living there at the time should speak their correct language.
The book “The Eagle of the Ninth Legion” at Amazon*
However, for budget reasons, the cameras began rolling in Hungary a year later. At least Macdonald was given a few more days of filming in the Scottish region of Wester Ross and at Loch Lomond. Since very little is known about the language of the Picts who settled there at the time, it was decided to turn them into Celts in the film who communicated in Gaelic.
However, there are only around 60,000 Scots who speak Gaelic fluently. When the casting process failed to find enough suitable local actors with this ability, Irish and Northern Irish speakers who spoke a different form of Gaelic also had to be used. In order to incorporate modern symbolism with a view to the Iraq War that was still raging at the time, Macdonald also had the somewhat bizarre idea of having the Roman invaders all speak English with a US accent.
Of course, you won’t notice any of this confusion of languages in the German dub. If you like, you can choose the original English version just for fun. According to our solid 3-star FILMSTARTS review, the film otherwise impresses with a deliberately thoughtful narrative style, impressive landscape shots and a harmonious atmosphere. However, there are deductions due to what, according to our author Florian Koch, was a primitive heroization during the finale.
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This is an updated republication of an article that previously appeared on FILMSTARTS.
