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Can we all just finally agree that Channing Tatum is a bad actor? The former Abercrombie & Fitch model, whom casting directors can’t get enough of these days, is the best proof out there that a pretty face and a killer bod do not make a fine performer.
Just as he failed to master the art of sappy line-reading in last year’s three-tissue drama “Dear John,” he flies blind in “The Eagle,” shifting from stiffly self-serious to fist-in-the-air angry as if the script and story just sailed right over his head. And that, sadly, is only scratching and sniffing the surface of what stinks in this grueling adaptation of Rosemary Sutcliff’s Ancient-Rome adventure novel, “The Eagle of the Ninth.”
If you know your world history, then you’ll at least be familiar with the gravity of the movie’s quest, which sees disgraced centurion Marcus Aquila (Tatum) and his British slave, Esca (Jamie Bell), trek beyond Roman borders to reclaim the empire’s all-important eagle standard, nabbed during the slaughter of his father’s famed Ninth Legion. Do not, however, look to the filmmakers to provide strength of purpose, as they render this journey as urgent as a hike to 7-Eleven. “You wouldn’t understand,” Marcus tells Esca of the Eagle’s sacredness, and with that, we cut to the next scene.
Director Kevin Macdonald and screenwriter Jeremy Brock continuously dangle, then draw back, the obvious-yet-unclear details, from what the Eagle truly means to the Republic to the shoddy implied violence, which is toned down to secure a PG-13 rating. It’s like flipping through a coddling children’s book with half of the sentences erased.
And beyond the grating distraction of its supposed Europeans speaking with red-blooded American accents, “The Eagle” hasn’t a clue of what to do with its complicated politics, first making a case against the atrocities Rome brought down on Esca’s people, then having the slave flip-flop and join his enemy anyway. Why? For all this movie conveys, it’s because those cool Romans look like Abercrombie & Fitch models.
The Eagle
One reel out of four
PG-13
Opens tomorrow in area theaters
Recommended Rental
Waiting for ‘Superman’
PG
Available Tuesday
Though it feels self-defeating in its lack of an action plan, Davis Guggenheim’s much-hyped documentary “Waiting for ‘Superman’” is worth seeing if only for the infuriating facts it reveals about America’s broken public education system.
Did you know lousy teachers are being swapped from school to school because their tenures have made them invincible? You will, and you also may well rethink where you send your kids. SPR
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