I recently, through the wonders of Netflix, watched two small, independent, historical action films. Centurion was a film I had intended to see while it was playing at the Landmark E Street Theatre, but somehow contrived to miss it. Even those reviews that were less than completely favorable made it seem like something I could enjoy. Valhalla Rising‘s reception was a bit more mixed and I hadn’t felt the same need to go see it. In fact, I wouldn’t have except when I logged onto Netflix, there it was, so I figured, what the hell.

Valhalla Rising main selling point was the Danish actor, Mads Mikkelsen. He played the famously damp villain ‘Le Chiffre’ in Daniel Craig’s first outing as James Bond and parlayed that into an outing as a heroic captain of the guards in the throwaway remake of Clash of the Titans. In this movie, he is a mute, one-eyed berserker who accompanies a group of would-be Crusaders on a trip to the Holy Land. They get lost and wind up on a river in a strange land, being attacked by invisible enemies.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out they’ve landed in the New World and the invisible enemies are Native Americans. Frankly, the whole movie looks like it was done by a pretentious film school student who decided to remake Terrence Malik’s The New World (a kick ass, awesome film, by the way) with Vikings. Muddled and unnecessary in the end.

But Mads does make one fine bad ass. I’m looking forward to an English language film that makes proper use of skills as an actor with the a talent for looking dangerous.

Centurion, I loved. It had its weak moments where it fell into cliché, but for the most part it was a solid and interesting work (with some very bloody and well done action). Rising star Michael Fassbender escapes from the Picts to join the 9th Legion who march up to take on the Picts. In a scene similar to one from Michael Mann’s Last of the Mohicans, the legion is ambushed and almost everyone killed. Fassbender and a small group of survivors go to rescue their general – and fail. They are subsequently chased by a single-minded and mute Olga Kurylenko (who was in Daniel Craig’s second outing as Bond) and band of angry Picts.

A lot of stuff happens, but basically, it plays out well as a metaphor for Afghanistan or Iraq. You are clearly sympathetic to the main character, a Roman/American soldier, but you also understand that the bad guys aren’t really bad. The Picts/Afghans/Iraqis quite reasonably don’t want the Romans/Americans in their country. It’s a sad situation. Mad sadder by the fact that Romans are pulling out of much of England, adding a frisson of “they died for nothing” to the Roman soldiers’ plight.