As the son of the legate under whom all 5,000 soldiers of Rome’s Ninth Legion disappeared along with their golden eagle standard, Marcus Flavius Aquila (Channing Tatum) bears the stain of hereditary dishonour.
Seen as a bad omen by the men of the far-flung outpost in Britain where he first takes command, Marcus nevertheless leads them to victory in a clash against local Pictish warriors, nearly sacrificing himself in the process.
The Eagle  
Directed by Kevin Macdonald Starring Channing Tatum, Jamie Bell, Donald Sutherland, Mark Strong, Tahar Rahim |
(Only the audience members, via subtitles, are aware that the teeth-gnashing, ostensibly mad Pict chieftain invokes rape, murder, and pillaging by Romans as the basis for his attack.)
But despite his demonstrated bravery, despite even the commendation he receives from Rome in affirmation of his own heroism, Marcus is tortured by the possibility that his father died without honour and resolves to bring the eagle home.
Venturing north into the unknown lands beyond Hadrian’s Wall, he leaves his uncle (Donald Sutherland) and the safety of Roman territory altogether, accompanied only by his slave Eska (Jamie Bell), a Briton whose life debt to Marcus makes him a convenient translator and guide.
When they find the Roman-loathing Seal People to whom rumours attribute possession of the golden eagle – painted, witch-doctory Others who seem to bear much closer resemblance to the bloodthirsty island natives in King Kong than anything you will remember from Braveheart – Eska claims Marcus as his slave before their interlocutors, either saving both their lives or remorselessly condemning Marcus to a new life of servitude.
The Eagle attempts to ape Avatar’s oversimplified message about multi-cultural acceptance through this role reversal, and with similar results. Realization dawns on Marcus that the tribespeople have their own codes of honour and their own profound attachment to the land Rome is continuously annexing as its own.
But for Marcus to learn his lesson, his experience as the object rather than the instrument of oppression requires oppressors perceived in some way as equivalent to good and proper Romans. Instead, after the Seal People are halfway established as honorable and decent, all moral and racial concerns fall by the wayside so that an extended, implausible chase sequence constituting the film’s climax can play out with distraction.
Meanwhile, thanks to an otherwise worse-than-unnecessary murder that reminds us who the bad guys are, that chase and selfsame climax set back the Seal People by about 90 minutes of runtime in terms of what political commentators have now taken to calling “optics.”
Taken purely as a period action film (which is not to say the action scenes are particularly coherent), The Eagle could serve as a mainstream, PG-rated companion piece to Valhalla Rising, particularly given the cinematically unfamiliar terrain of Hungary (as England) and Scotland. The Eagle looks more like a modern war movie than like any of the old sun-drenched sword-and-sandals epics, and at times cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle seems to be channelling his inner Terrence Malick.
But it seems that director Kevin Macdonald and screenwriter Jeremy Brock (previously collaborators on The Last King of Scotland) intended something more than a brawny actioner with this adaptation of Rosemary Sutcliff’s 1954 novel. Unfortunately, the cultural commentary is largely lost in the noise of battle and pursuit.
The cast is so preponderantly masculine that any female viewers Tatum might literally attract with his good looks will have to make do with ogling and without identifying – it is difficult to recall a single woman in the entire film.
Tatum and Bell gamely give their all to this buddy/chase/quest/revenge movie, and when they’re sons and slaves surrounded by other Romans, they fit the bill. But like Orlando Bloom before him (in Kingdom of Heaven), Tatum makes a bit of a far-fetched lead when it comes to actual leadership, considering we still have the likes of Russell Crowe and Sylvester Stallone kicking around – the gruff types who are believable when they take charge.
Mark Strong finally bucks the trend of his bad-guy typecasting playing a lost legionnaire, and alongside Donald Sutherland he brings some much-needed presence to the picture. Tahar Rahim plays it straight as the Seal Prince, but it seems worth mentioning that the problematic archetype underlying his character seems not to have developed since Henry Brandon appeared as the antagonist Scar in The Searchers in 1956.
Eventually, someone will make a picture like this and get the message right.