'Eagle'review: Channing Tatum is bland, but battle scenes are well staged

A soldier and a slave search for Roman treasure in NorthernBritain. WithChanning Tatum,Jamie Bell. Director:Kevin MacDonald(1:54). PG-13: Violence. At area theaters.

No one expects movies about gladiators to be complex. On the cinematic battlefield, at least, issues of Roman aggression, honor and brotherhood seem duty-bound to be as basic as an arena match that ends with a thumb's-up or a thumb's-down.

It is exactly that lack of originality, however, that pushes"TheEagle"closer to the second-thumb choice, at least as we know it in movie-review terms.

This old-fashioned sword-and-sandal drama has all the bread and circuses we've come to know from the movies. It flirts with interesting story choices, but ultimately, all roads lead to boredom.

In 140 A.D., young soldierMarcus Aquila(Channing Tatum) assumes command of a Roman troop in northern Britain. Two decades earlier, near this territory, Marcus' father led his own men into the highlands— they all disappeared, along with their golden Eagle that was the symbol ofRome.

Hoping to restore honor to his family name, Marcus ignores the advice of his uncle (miscastDonald Sutherland) and volunteers to go beyond Hadrian's Wall—"the end of the civilized world"— to retrieve the Eagle, rumored to be in the hands of a northern tribe.

He chooses as his only backup a slave, Esca (Jamie Bell), whom Marcus impetuously saved from death in an arena. Esca, a Briton and the son of a defeated chief, knows the land and says he owes his life to Marcus.

But when they come upon the war-painted people ofCaledonia, Esca suddenly holds Marcus and the Eagle's fate in his hands.

Tatum's profile is a Roman coin come to life, but little else about his bland performance is lively. Bell ("Billy Elliot") could do more with his sullen scrappiness, butJeremy Brock's script, based on a novel, keeps Esca a toadying servant whose fate owes less to strategy than to dumb luck and blind trust.

Director Kevin MacDonald has made feature films, including"The Last King of Scotland,"but he's best known as anOscar-winningdocumentarian ("One Day in September"). That background can't keep most of"The Eagle"from feeling so false,Charlton Hestoncirca 1959 would fit right in.

The movie's ham-handedness doesn't damage the well-staged battle scenes— though it infects almost everything else, from the appearance of Mohawked wild people to the toga-wearing magistrates.

It's all here: Funeral pyres, rallying cries, ridiculous dialogue ("A gladiator versus a slave is never a fair contest! Never!"). Apparently, the rule here was: When in a Roman Empire movie, do as past Roman Empire movies do.

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