This movie hasn't gotten particularly good reviews, but I had to see it just because I'd seen Centurion on Netflix a few months ago. Centurion is about the Ninth Legion losing the Roman standard when they are wiped out in northern Britain, and The Eagle is about one Roman and his British slave traveling north of Hadrian's wall twenty years later to recover the standard -- the titular eagle.
The Eagle is based on Rosemary Sutcliff's 1954 novel, The Eagle of the Ninth. The protagonist is the son of the Roman commander of the Ninth who was in charge when the legion and standard were lost. The son wants to redeem the family name. His slave is the son of a British chieftain who was killed by Romans. As with Centurion, the British natives are depicted with a lot of sympathy and with a legitimate grievance against the Roman occupiers. This is a very male movie. There are no major female characters, and the themes are masculine friendship, honor, loyalty, respect, military prowess, and self-sacrifice.
It works pretty well as an action-adventure film, less so (for me) as a commentary on the importance of honor. It was most interesting for its attempts to recreate the ancient world of Britain, with Roman forts and villas and tribal villages. The Scottish landscape is used to great effect, again as in Centurion. The action scenes are variable in quality, with a combination of shaky-cam-rapid-editing and more traditional (and more coherent) approaches. While there's quite a bit of implied violence, there's little in the way of explicit gore.
Nothing great, but entertaining enough.
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