Swords, sandals
and suckiness

>> The Last Legion is a poor excuse
for an adventure movie

by MARK SLUTSKY

This is some seriously sad shit. August, like February, is the kind of month studios tend to use to drop films they otherwise can’t get rid of, usually with little or no fanfare, and that’s definitely the case with The Last Legion. This thing is a lousy, embarrassing all-around swords-and-sandals flick that resembles more an episode of that ’90s Sinbad TV show than anything that should be respectably called a motion picture.

You could definitely put together a decent movie with a cast that includes Ben Kingsley, Colin Firth, Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai and Kevin McKidd, but this wouldn’t be it. The Last Legion has the reek of “tax-credit-financed international co-production” all over it.

The movie’s set in the fifth century A.D., right at the fall of the Roman Empire, which apparently ended with a big battle wherein the young new Caesar, Romulus Augustus (Thomas Sangster), was whisked out of the city by a crew of lovable but grim-faced misfit warriors. They’re all under the spiritual guidance of super-shaman Ben Kingsley, who, with his long hair, grey beard, old-fashioned frock and fighting staff, looks either like he’s Gandalf’s poor cousin or, alternately, like he should be hanging out with the Asterix crew.

Eventually the posse, which also features Firth as a beleaguered centurion and Rai as a highly-trained but frequently confused-looking assassin, make it to Britannia, and the movie’s broad hints of Arthurian legend really go into overdrive (there’s even a sacred sword that ends up in a stone).

Antoine Fuqua’s lame King Arthur also tried to exploit the same connection, but at least that movie had Keira Knightley running around as warrior woman Queen Guinevere. The most you can expect to get out of The Last Legion are some laughs, as there’s some truly inept and corny filmmaking on display here. My favourite scene had Ben Kingsley hanging from a rope over a cliff and barking instructions at everyone, but you might enjoy the magnificent CGI-enhanced season-changing sequence yourself. However, you’re unlikely to stay awake for the rest of this sorry excuse for an epic, truly the kind of movie where you have to wonder how broke the actors were to sign on for this treatment.

The Last Legion opens this
Friday, Aug. 17

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