The Last Legion

The Last Legion

The last legion is and Indian film made in English language released on April 7, 2007. It is written by Jez Butterworth and Tom Butterworth by combining three stories;

-          Two legends ‘Sword in the Stone’ and ‘The Dragon Legion’ and

-          One history ‘Fall of Rome Empire’.

This amalgam made by the writer has benefited the director to avoid monotonous and length of the movie as always there remains a sequence to come and complete the story with bound the spectators to see what comes next.

Let suppose when the history of the fall of Roman Empire was near to an end at the time of Romulus coronation, Goths commander Odoacer intended to kill young Romulus. The magician Ambronious (   ) asks for mercy, and Romulus and magician sent to Capri in the custody of Odoacer’s lieutenant Wulfila. There they come across the pre-Arthurian legend ‘The Sowrd in the Stone’. And Romulus according to the prophecy made by Ambrosinus keeps the sword with him.

Later, they are rescued by Aurelius (Colin Firth) and accompanied by Asian agent Mira (Aishwarya)- expert in martial art of Kalaripayattu) belongs to Eastern Roman Empire Territory. Here ‘The Legend of Dragon’ starts and spectators are compaelled to follow the legend. The betrayal given by Nestor was near to a shock as this female agent was sent by him and she was not expecting this type of trick and story takes a new turn by invading war after the sudden appearance of the hidden army of the fallen Rome. All of them reunite in the Celtic village of Britain and Romulus and a girl Igraine develops likeness. Side by side Aurelius and Mira develops love relation.

Stories are now too congested to swallow by the audience and thanks to the director he wage the last final war against Goths. This is a sort of melting point where all the stories resolved to the happy end of Romulus ‘ getting back his empire as PENDRAGON  and his guardians become the newly married couple Aurelius and Mira. When Romulus get elder they married him with Igraine and give birth to a child name Arthur. At the end of movie Arthur is introduced to the Sword in the Stone fix by Romulus after winning his Empire.

This movie ‘The last legion’ is a jam-packed version of three legends give no time to think as what is going on. Rather it is well said that it is a family story made for children to enjoy their holiday after censoring those PG-13 scenes which can be easily removed as they are readily insert by the director to attract the adults however this is a failed attempt. It can raise the child interest to become like a Romulus and could fight with that sword in reality but have no margin to attract the elder audience.

However for the sake of picture present in the cinema we can say that all the characters do their part well as Aishwarya takes the right get up for warrior and Colin Firth is good selection. Pasteurization is impressive. All the scenes are well pictured and dialogues are spoken in an accent which surely takes us to the royal world of Rome. We really admire the director to set the stage and display the things take us really to that era of history. We feel as we are seeing the history being changed by us. The writers so beautifully merge the three stories that it becomes difficult for even the historian to tell where on has finished and the next started. It is a good historical fiction interpreting by Tom Butterworth as a Last Legion’. It seems he is thinking himself of a magician and indirectly taking the place of magician Merlin.