The Last Legion

Who showed to see the battle epic being sold as a new take on Arthurian legend?

by Drew Lazor

Aug. 20, 7:40 p.m., UA Riverview

Empty. That's how Theater 10 looked as a friend and I hunkered down to take in The Last Legion, the battle epic that's being sold as a new take on Arthurian legend. Though about four other people trickled in after us, it'd be ridiculous to blame lackluster attendance on the crap weather — I became aware of the release only because I have a bad habit of watching cable past 2 a.m.

Legion follows the soporific exploits of Aurelius (Colin Firth), a ranking Roman soldier tasked with protecting the preteen Caesar (Thomas Sangster) after a bunch of dirty-bearded Goths manage to gain control of the Roman Empire. When he learns that a single battalion of loyal soldiers remains unconquered, Aurelius leads a band of single-sentence character sketches to Brittania, a journey that thankfully boils down to a 25-second fade-and-dissolve PowerPoint montage. The legendary sword Excalibur factors in here somewhere, though attempting to explain how would be akin to describing the intricacies of the West Coast offense to my mother.

To be sure, the nonexistent audience made for some particularly eerie moments, as one-liners that would usually be met with guffaws ("He's a woman!" exclaims one soldier after the revelation that a masked Turkish warrior is actually the stunning Aishwarya Rai) were met with deafening silence, not unlike the awkward lull that occurs right after a Catholic priest ends a sermon. Even worse, the film's half-assed action scenes feature innumerable instances of baddies hurling axes and spears at other characters, only to have the camera cut away for a canned reaction shot before returning to the slain party, medieval death implement dangling from his or her chest cavity.

Some more stultifying moments come in the form of Vortgyn (Harry Van Gorkum), a 100 percent unexplained warlord who wears an MF Doom mask and is eventually kicked inside a burning tree (yes) by Ben Kingsley, who employs a bizarre Brindian accent that isn't designed to pronounce the word "pentangle." Since it's a Weinstein release, there's a possibility that the movie made more sense before Harvey Scissorhands got to it. But, judging by the emotionally broken expressions of my fellow moviegoers as we left the theater, anything longer would've killed them.