Review

Review Date: 19-August-07
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Just OK

The Last Legion (2007)

If I discovered "The Last Legion" home sick one day, parked on the couch with a box of tissues and the TV remote, I would probably feel quite fortunate. It has an ass-kicking female and plenty of men in skirts, so how could a beggar complain? Yet as a major motion picture it left me unfulfilled.* It starts out strong by virtue of freshness and then fades to an echo of other films.

"The Last Legion" traces the emergence of the sword Excalibur to fifth-century Rome. The dying empire has just crowned a new Caesar named Romulus (super-cute Thomas Sangster), a mere slip of a boy given a man-sized job. Barbarians invade the city within hours of his coronation, killing his parents and bundling him off to the island fortress at Capri under guard of a cruel and sweaty heathen (Kevin McKidd). By chance or design, he is accompanied in bondage by his mystical tutor (Ben Kingsley), who can talk to birds and frequently delivers dumb lines like "we are the keepers of the flame."

All is not lost, however, for the Caesar's protection was entrusted to a veteran soldier of unwavering allegiance (Colin Firth, even more phlegmatic than usual). Having survived the initial attack, he sets out to rescue his charge with a few trusted comrades and an eastern warrior on loan from Constantinople. To less surprise than one might expect, this person turns out to be a woman (Indian superstar Aishwarya Rai) who can slay men with her triple-bladed dagger as easily as her baby blues. She is almost as fearsome a weapon as the miraculous sword which Romulus finds by fate.

It goes without saying that Firth and Rai fall into bed, but this being a youth-friendly show she gracefully slides under his sheets after hinting how nice it would be for him to settle down and make an honest woman out of her. Luckily the gooey takes a back seat to the epic, expressed in the second half by a Lord of the Rings trek shot (Italy to Britain in 12 seconds) and the battles that ensue when the emperor and his entourage find the remnants of the Roman legion posted to Hadrian's Wall. They are still pursued by the sweaty heathen, who inexplicably teams with a native thug in a face mask. (Why rip off "Kingdom of Heaven" when it wasn't a hit? Or is this a bit of Arthurian lore I don't recall?) It is up to the representatives of the once-proud empire to take these guys down in blood-spattered glory so that Romulus and his sword can grow roots in the land.

This is all well and good, but laying the groundwork for one of the most powerful legends in human history is not to be taken lightly. Or lite-ly, which is how "The Last Legion" tells its tale.

*I use "major" loosely; the studio barely promoted this flick, which is surprising after the success of "300."

Copyright © 2007 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.