Today I want to mention a film I’ve never seen. Centurion......................
Today I want to mention a film I’ve never seen. Centurion, (Friday 30th September, 8.30pm) is about Roman Centurion Quintus Dias who lives in Northern England in 117 AD and leads a group of soldiers on a mission to save their General, who has been captured by savage and violent rebels called the Picts.
Centurion is appointment viewing for me this week because I’ve become fascinated with the man who plays Quintus Dias, Michael Fassbender. Not fascinated in a girlie crush-kind of way (although he is terribly dashing as Rochester in Jane Eyre, current playing in cinemas), but out of admiration for his ability to cross the genre spectrum from indie film to Hollywood blockbuster with his credibility intact.
Fassbender is an actor with such range and versatility you often don’t realise it’s him you’re watching. When Tom Cruise takes on a character that character becomes Tom Cruise, but with Fassbender you actually have to look twice to see the man behind the character. He manages to fit into any century you throw him, has Christian Bale like dedication to dramatically changing his body shape to suit his character and, on top of it all, possesses the charisma of a leading man.
If there was ever a year for Fassbender to take over the world then this is it. Although he’s actually been a “rising star” since his 2008 award-winning performance as Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands, in Steve McQueen’s film Hunger, he has truly arrived in 2011, with the volume, range and quality of his work being quite extraordinary.
He’s picked up the Best Actor Award at the Venice Film Festival recently for playing a sex addict in another Steve McQueen film, Shame, and has been receiving rave reviews for his portrayal of Carl Jung in David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method. He’s also dominated at the multiplexes with his spot-on performance as comic book character Eric Lehnsherr/Magneto in Hollywood blockbuster X-Men First Class, and has swept us off our feet in Charlotte Bronte’s gothic romance Jane Eyre.
If you want to see what all the fuss is about, and can handle director Neil Marshall’s love of blood and gore (he’s renowned for his splatter horror films), then don’t miss Mr Fassbender this Friday as the action hero in the blood thirsty Centurion.