Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

FRIENDS, ROMANS, countrymen, brace thyselves for the manliest film of the season. Aye, for Centurionis not only armed with Romans fighting Picts, but also with some of the manliest dialogue this side of WWF. “Her soul is an empty vessel,” one soldier says of the villainess, “and only Roman blood can fill it.”

The first manly man we meet is Quintus Dias (Fassbender), a Roman stationed in northern Britain in the second century and promptly taken captive by Picts. He eventually escapes and finds solace with the Ninth Legion. Led by the volatile, but magnificently named Virilus (Dominic West), Quintus joins the soldiers and their mute Pict tracker Etain (Kurylenko) in a campaign.