The Lost Legion

Indeed many huge movies and TV series was made by many with huge budgets, yet Legion delivers on what it promises: A good drama, love story, some nastiness and of course bevy of nice slave girls. A bit too long( I have seen 90 minute version) and as compared to the so called original ( which most folks have seen since LionsGate released it in a rough cut form) it is quite good.

Now as to the history of the piece. It is of course a part fiction and part historically accurate. I have not considered Wikipedia as a reliable source. I consider Wilipedia a source for those who are lazy to do a proper research or too ignorant to read a book. Well, I have read Peter Heather's " The Fall of the Roman Empire" the only real book on the subject since Edward Gibbon's more then 300 years ago. In Lost Legion I see elements of Heather's accurate history as well as fiction, all blended well.

For the connoisseurs of history I suggest for future viewers to look for the shorter 90 min version. As a pilot for possible series this exceeds anyone's expectations. I do however agree with the original review above , that the 2h original version is indeed too verbose and badly put together, however an intelligent fan of history will find the "pearls" among some of the "amateur "editing and sound post production.

I almost slashed my wrist to stay awake.

More useless talk then needed and hard to follow who they were talking about. If that legend was the last of the great Romans, you can tell why there was an end to the era. The beginning of the movie was the only real action and even then you didn't know why or where they were going the rest was blahhhhh.

I watched the first 30 minutes or so, and tried to ignore the bad acting and costumes, I was hoping the plot would be good, and it was weak. It is soft porn with a British accent.

Going through a phase of watching "End of the Roman Empire" movies ("The Last Legion", "The Standard") and so gave this one a go as well. After a slow-motion fight sequence (not very well handled) at the very beginning, the thing descends into non-stop copulation plus the lead participants in this (the masters/mistresses of the performing slaves) talking endlessly of plots, intrigues, machinations and political manoeuvrings. After a solid half hour of this, I could feel myself going comatose and did something I very rarely do once I have started to watch a movie; gave up and did something more constructive with my time. I am grateful for the hour or so I saved by not watching this tripe further, but resent having wasted the half hour spent watching the first third. Do ANYTHING (rearrange your sock drawer, sort your desktop paper clips according to size, polish all your shoes etc.) rather than making the same mistake! (Makes the two other (moderately good) films mentioned look like "Gladiator" or "Ben Hur" in comparison!)

What do you get when you combine bad acting and historically illiterate writer ? You get the Lost Legion. I would say that the title of the movie gave you the real impression of the movie itself.... i.e.: lost.

Bad script can be the cause of bad movie, but so is bad acting. This is one of the movie where you have both of them. I am not a history buff, but know enough about the Roman history or at least know where to find the reading material about it. Just in case the director or the writer of the Lost Legion is reading this article, you can find some simple information on the website called Wikipedia.

If you can not or do not want to follow the history line, just name the country on your movie some "abracadabra country", that way you don't insult the intelligence of the people watching your movie and nobody can complaint that the director or the script writer are quite illiterate in history.

Forget about the Roman army, there is no such army on this movie, not even a CGI army. The setting was barely enough to justify as a screen setting and the green-screen action were done so badly that you can actually see that the background is coming from some other movie.

My suggestion is that if you do have the money to spend, give it to the homeless guy on the street. And if you have the time to spend, sitting in your backyard doing nothing is still better than watching this crap.