Today on TV: With this tough historical action hero, Channing Tatum survives the wait for “Gladiator 2”

Thanks to the enormous success of “Gladiator” at the box office and at the Oscars, a small wave of films in this direction followed. One of its somewhat late offshoots was 2011’s “The Eagle of the Ninth Legion” with muscle-bound “Magic Mike” star Channing Tatum, as always. The whole thing doesn’t come close to the original, but it should be a worthwhile pastime for fans of historical action adventures until “Gladiator 2” finally hits theaters in just under a year.

‘The Eagle of the Ninth Legion’ can be seen today, December 8, 2023 at 10:45 PM on RTL 2. There is a repeat that same evening at 4:55 am. The film is also available as Blu-ray, DVD or paid video-on-demand:

If you’re an Amazon Prime customer, you can watch the film there too Stream at no extra cost*. All you have to do is sign up for Filmtastic Channel’s seven-day free trial. If you do not want to cancel again, you will pay 3.99 euros per month after the trial period.

Besides Channing Tatum, there are a few other famous stars. You can expect to see Jamie Bell (“Rocketman”), Mark Strong (“Shazam! 1+2”), Taher Rahim (“Napoleon”) and Hollywood veteran Donald Sutherland from the series “The Hunger Games”.

“The Eagle of the Ninth Legion” on RTL 2: that is the story

The year is 140 AD: the Roman Empire is still in shock. The reason for this is the complete disappearance of the entire Ninth Legion more than twenty years ago in Caledonia (modern Scotland). 5,000 men went on campaign, and none of them returned. No one knows what became of the soldiers, including the father of aspiring officer Marcus Aquila (Tatum).

Driven by a desire to clarify the fate of the Ninth Legion and return its standard, a gilded bronze eagle, to Rome, Marcus has transferred himself to a small fortress in southwestern Britain. With courage and military skill he wins the respect of his troops, but is seriously injured during a mission. His superiors encourage him to resign from the army with glory and move to his uncle (Sutherland) in southern England.

Marcus reluctantly follows this recommendation, which – as he well knows – is actually an order. At home he falls into a depression from which he only awakens when he hears that the missing eagle has been spotted in the north beyond Hadrian’s Wall…

Concessions in the field of authenticity

In 2008, Kevin Macdonald, who won an Oscar for his documentary “One Day in September,” was assigned to direct an astonishingly gritty and bloody adaptation of Rosemary’s classic young adult book “The Eagle of the Ninth Legion.” Sutcliff. fairly innocuous compared to the movie. The director of “State Of Play” intended to make his work as authentic as possible. He really wanted to film in the Scottish Highlands and the actors playing characters from the tribes living there at the time had to speak their correct language.

However, for budgetary reasons, the cameras started rolling in Hungary a year later. At least Macdonald got a few more days of filming in Scotland’s Wester Ross region and at Loch Lomond. Because very little is known about the language of the Picts who settled there at the time, it was decided to make the film of them Celts who communicated in Gaelic.

However, there are only around 60,000 Scots who are fluent in Gaelic. When the casting process failed to find enough suitable local actors with this ability, Irish and Northern Irish speakers who spoke a different form of Gaelic also had to be used. To incorporate modern symbolism in view of the war in Iraq that was still raging, Macdonald also had the somewhat bizarre idea of ​​having the Roman invaders all speak English with an American accent.

You will of course not notice this language confusion during today’s broadcast, as it is in a German dubbed version. However, according to our solid 3-star FILMSTARTS review, the film impresses with its deliberately thoughtful story, impressive landscape shots and harmonious atmosphere. However, there are inferences due to what our author Florian Koch believes was a primitive act of heroism during the finale.

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