In the vast field of cinema, there exists a great harvest of terrible movies. Each and every year, moviegoers shoulder this awful burden and learn to appreciate the rare good movie, taking the rest of the schlock with a grain of salt.
It's a sad eventuality of the spring season, and normally it's quite easy to shrug off the occasional bad action flick, but not this time — not with "The Eagle."
The movie begins following charismatic Roman general Marcus Aquila (Channing Tatum), as he takes a new post at a small fort bordering hostile Briton-occupied territory.
After a great, but catastrophic victory against an onslaught from the "Britain menace," Aquila is forced to honorably resign from his post due to heavy injuries sustained in the fort's defense.
After his discharge and a series of ego-damaging mishaps, Aquila decides to take to the northern wilderness in search of Rome's golden Eagle, a highly valued military symbol lost by Aquila's father in a previous campaign.
Armed with only meager supplies and a Celtic slave (Jamie Bell), Aquila begins a hunt into the wilderness in hopes of finding The Eagle and restoring his family's honor.
From the very beginning, I could tell this movie was a disaster.
Typically, the goal of film is to convey a story where the audience feels connected with the main character and sides with their plight — "The Eagle," however, seems perfectly engineered from the very beginning to make the audience despise the "hero," Aquila, and "the good guys," the Romans. In fact, I've never seen a movie try so hard to make their protagonists look so bad.
In addition to the fact that every other line is devoted to making the plot-quest sound like a dumb idea — which it is — the characters in the story never seem to stop making the Romans look like complete sociopaths. The kicker is, even the Roman soldiers admit that they completely had it all coming.
Honestly, the acting isn't much better than the plot — but it's a bad action movie, I think that speaks for itself. This movie could be cast top to bottom with Oscar winners and it still wouldn't make the characters any more consistent or believable.
One minute Aquila gives a speech about honor and glory, the next he murders a small Celtic child from behind as he tries to flee from an unprovoked attack in some woods near his home.
Honestly, I could go on for hours about the atrocity that is "The Eagle," but I'll sum it up in short: "The Eagle" is a disgusting piece of popcorn cinema, full to the brim with stilted action, inconsistent characters, shoddy acting, inaccurate portrayals of race, and completely reprehensible plot presentations.
It's a sad eventuality of the spring season, and normally it's quite easy to shrug off the occasional bad action flick, but not this time — not with "The Eagle."
The movie begins following charismatic Roman general Marcus Aquila (Channing Tatum), as he takes a new post at a small fort bordering hostile Briton-occupied territory.
After a great, but catastrophic victory against an onslaught from the "Britain menace," Aquila is forced to honorably resign from his post due to heavy injuries sustained in the fort's defense.
After his discharge and a series of ego-damaging mishaps, Aquila decides to take to the northern wilderness in search of Rome's golden Eagle, a highly valued military symbol lost by Aquila's father in a previous campaign.
Armed with only meager supplies and a Celtic slave (Jamie Bell), Aquila begins a hunt into the wilderness in hopes of finding The Eagle and restoring his family's honor.
From the very beginning, I could tell this movie was a disaster.
Typically, the goal of film is to convey a story where the audience feels connected with the main character and sides with their plight — "The Eagle," however, seems perfectly engineered from the very beginning to make the audience despise the "hero," Aquila, and "the good guys," the Romans. In fact, I've never seen a movie try so hard to make their protagonists look so bad.
In addition to the fact that every other line is devoted to making the plot-quest sound like a dumb idea — which it is — the characters in the story never seem to stop making the Romans look like complete sociopaths. The kicker is, even the Roman soldiers admit that they completely had it all coming.
Honestly, the acting isn't much better than the plot — but it's a bad action movie, I think that speaks for itself. This movie could be cast top to bottom with Oscar winners and it still wouldn't make the characters any more consistent or believable.
One minute Aquila gives a speech about honor and glory, the next he murders a small Celtic child from behind as he tries to flee from an unprovoked attack in some woods near his home.
Honestly, I could go on for hours about the atrocity that is "The Eagle," but I'll sum it up in short: "The Eagle" is a disgusting piece of popcorn cinema, full to the brim with stilted action, inconsistent characters, shoddy acting, inaccurate portrayals of race, and completely reprehensible plot presentations.
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