As I sat watching “The Eagle”, questioning the scarcity of my sanity, rationing of my reason, recognizing that once again my love of the spectacle, untreatable addiction to any historical or fictional references whether biblical: “The Ten Commandments”, “The Robe”,”Quo Vadis”, “The Last Temptation of Christ”, gladiatorial: “Ben Hur”, “The Gladiator” , “Spartacus”, roundtable: “Camelot”, “Excalibur”, “Knights of the Round Table”, “First Knight”; in a pitiable trance of emotional blindness I willingly wandered into this morass of a nonsensical quest for piece of mental in the shape of an eagle. Why? Only Freud or Jung could venture a cause or a cure.
The year is 140, Marcus Aquila (Channing Tatum) decides to champion the blight on Rome’s reputation, their ultimate symbol of invasion, world domination; the talisman, eagle, that went missing, along with his father and 5 thousand warriors 20 years ago in what I can only assume was Scotland, home of the grotesquely disguised Seal people, the present custodians, worshipers of, you surmised it, the illusive, inconsequential, inedibile, not even endangered eagle!
Marcus takes his slave Esca (Jamie Bell, “Billy Elliot”, the prime reason I remained stultifying, soddered to my seat); related in some genealogical issue to the Seal people. Esca’s efficacious transformation from slave to master was the elixir, libation, preventing complete hypnotic ennui from murdering my numbed and lachrymose sensitivities. Jamie Bell’s running, athletic, prismatic performance could not award “The Eagle” more than……..
TWO STARS!!
For Now………..Peneflix