The Last Legion: Critic Reviews

Every once in a while, though, Firth's eyebrow hints, Can you believe I'm wearing this dorky leather breastplate?

This sword-and-sandal spectacle from those epic-loving De Laurentiises might have made a good children’s film.

A hunk of old Brie, left all day in the glove compartment in a car on a hot summer's day, could not smell more ripe than this absurd sword'n'sandal Roman movie.

The movie rarely feels fresh. Even an absurd cage-match like 300 cared enough to be both rousing and handsome. There's no fun to be had here.

I have too much respect for Kingsley and Firth to believe they did this for anything other than the money, and to their credit, they give their best efforts.

Put yourself in the proper boy's-adventure mindset and The Last Legion's corny moments will just add to the charm.

The chief problem with The Last Legion stems from the filmmakers' apparent inability to decide what kind of pic they wanted to make, and what sort of audience they wanted to target.

In The Last Legion, Rome doesn't fall. But it does look like it would rather be lying down and taking a nap.

There are, after all, aimed at young audiences plenty of movies more mean-spirited, indiscriminate and obnoxious than The Last Legion. But at the same time there are plenty that are, alas, less frustrating.

All are given swords to swing and mouthfuls of fake archaic dialogue to speak and none of it makes a whisper of sense.

Firth is horribly miscast. I'll buy him as a romantic lead or the main character in a drama, but he's almost laughable as an action hero.

We can only hope that the title of this misbegotten swords-and-sandals adventure is prophetic.

As the Roman Empire crumbles, undemanding escapist entertainment with wonderful production design and a cast.

No twist is too farfetched for this Dino De Laurentiis epic.

A novel hybrid of swords, sandals, horned helmets and furs, this really is a load of old rubbish, but there's some fun to be had, especially for boys who like to have mock sword fights with wooden sticks.

Colin Firth is not an actor who projects sparkling joie de vivre at the best of times, and The Last Legion, a cod-Roman reimagining of Arthurian myth, is very much not the best of times.

A good cast wallow about in a story you can't believe for a moment.

Silly and camp.

Tosh, but disarmingly sincere.

Paper-thin characters, stilted conversations and abrupt editing mean this is hard to get involved with, and its link with Arthurian legend feels contrived and cliched.

The action sequences are handled well enough but the CGI isn't up to snuff in a tale that barely merits the retelling.

Crudely mangling Arthurian legend into Roman history, this creaky swords 'n' sandals romper trundles forward like a hurriedly upholstered TV movie.