The Eagle: Critic Reviews

Likes or dislikes about The Eagle will be based on how you feel about Channing Tatum.

The director's documentary background informs his almost reportorial attention to landscape, fighting technique, and especially the wild, fascinating otherness of the peoples beyond the reach of Rome.

Lumbering along for a bit less than two hours, which passes like three, it feels more like a chore than like an adventure.

The Eagle appeals to my older self while retaining what made my childhood reading so stirring.

A decent, forthright, if finally uninspired sword'n'sandal drama, based on Rosemary Sutcliff's 1954 children's novel The Eagle of the Ninth.

Despite some breathtaking scenery and documentary-like realism, The Eagle ultimately falls to some surprising contrivances that seem written by focus groups.

Becomes absurd precisely when Channing Tatum marches onto the scene as a Roman army commander.

This is a movie that needs a great or gonzo performer to give it depth or heft. In Channing Tatum, it has an actor who gives it camp.

A thunderous boys' adventure of the old-school type.

Anthony Dod Mantle's cinematography is kinetic when it needs to be, ruminative and pretty when it doesn't. It looks good.

The latest sandals-and-swords outing, "The Eagle" has landed . . . with a thud.

The Eagle fails to soar, thanks largely to Kevin Macdonald's unimaginative direction and Channing Tatum's charisma-challenged performance.

Wild-eyed, long-haired Brits leap atop the Romans' shields as the soldiers blindly hack away, the bodies so close that you can barely tell the victor from the vanquished. The battles in the fog and rain have a hallucinatory power.

The story sags in the middle, as our wanderers traipse through the highlands-not a happy environment for Tatum, who, before his journey even begins, looks all at sea in this distant age.

"The Eagle" is a rip-snorting adventure tale of the sort made before CGI, 3-D and alphabet soup in general took the fun out of moviegoing.

Too often in "The Eagle," in which the Romans are played by American actors and the Britons are played by Brits, Tatum comes off like "second Roman warrior from the left" rather than "Roman warrior the film is about."

Exciting and even moving, this robust epic is filled with action, male bonding, and a terrifying sense of wilderness.

A muscularly entertaining adventure inspired by Rosemary Sutcliff's historical fiction The Eagle of the Ninth, hugely popular in middle schools in the mid-20th century.

Channing Tatum plays Marcus Aquila with an earnest furrowed brow that could indicate gravitas or constipation.

Alas, from its scruffy period melodrama to its repetitious battles and endless cross-country shots, this film is all grandiosity with no real heft.

To its credit, the film does attempt to grapple with the ambivalence that Europe and America feel toward the Roman Empire. We admire its cultural achievements while condemning its brutality, and in that tension we see our own ideals and failures reflected

A codpiece-and-crossbow saga of relentlessly exciting battle sequences sandwiched between tedious, unconvincing chatter about cantankerous centurions, fiery feudal warriors and camera-ready six-pack abs modeled by hunky pinups...

An earnest throwback to an earlier brand of filmmaking.

A long slog through ancient muck, so-so sword fights and dumb luck.

For my money, "Centurion," using similar Scottish and Eastern European locations and with the formidable Michael Fassbender as its star Roman is a more rousing and entertaining movie.