The Ninth Legion Marches Again

The Ninth Legion Marches Again

Of all of Rome’s legions, none has captured the imagination of writers and historians than the legendary Ninth Legion, and The Eagle joins Centurion and The Last Legion in tackling the ultimate fate of the Legio IX Hispana. All three films pick annihilation in battle over simple disbandment as the legion’s end. However, The Last Legion is suffuse with Arthurian elements, Centurion is about Roman legionnaires evading capture and death after the Ninth was massacred in battle, and The Eagle tells the story of a Roman officer who will not rest until his family’s honor is redeemed.

In The Eagle, Flavuis Aquila leads the Ninth Legion to unconquered Scotland and vanishes with his army. Twenty years later, his son, Marcus (Channing Tatum), takes command of a garrison in Britain. Marcus soon sets out on a quest to restore his family’s honor. Guided by his slave, Esca (Jamie Bell), he ventures beyond Hadrian’s Wall and journeys to the Scottish highlands to retrieve the eagle, the legion’s emblem, and cleanse his family’s name tarnished by his father’s defeat and the eagle’s loss.

Marcus is idealistic, pious, honorable, valiant, and even naïve for trusting a slave from a hostile tribe. He is every bit a Roman officer and a gentleman. With these traits, it is easy to hope for his success in recovering the eagle. It is Esca, a Briton bounded by honor, who thickens the plot with his suspicious behavior in the highlands. He is not entirely a slave as he is not a meek shadow that only steps where his master steps. Sometimes he leads Marcus, too far at times that his motives provide some of the tension in the film. The men are not wooden representatives of civilization and barbarism because Marcus, the civilized among the two, displays a killer’s heart while Esca, the savage, exhibits humanity in combat.

The breathtaking shots of thousands of warriors that have characterized the genre are absent in The Eagle as the battles are skirmishes rather than full-scale war. Here, Rome’s vaunted legions do not march on the field. Even the Ninth’s last stand is revisited only through Guern’s (Mark Strong) account. However, the pitiful numbers of legionnaires fight with the ferocity of Leonidas and his Spartans. Because the camera does not sweep across a vast field of fighting men but focuses on a few desperate men, each slash of the gladius becomes as important as a pivotal cavalry charge.

Even if Marcus is not the cartoonish Captain Duke Hauser of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Tatum is clearly overshadowed by Bell’s portrayal of Esca who displays a slave’s meekness, a freeman’s dignity, derision for his master’s obsession with the eagle, and contempt for Rome. His Esca is the image of a man forced into bondage by honor.

For pushing a young Roman on a perilous quest of redemption and forcing a slave to serve a man who is remotely stained with the blood of his people, the Ninth Legion’s emblem can represent something grander than the Eternal City, something that can only soar like an eagle.

- Prospero Pulma Jr.