Age of Treason

Watching Age of Treason on the now defunct Saudi Aramco TV channel 3 while working in Bahrain almost ten years ago I fell in love with it and the characters. There are some top English–speaking movie and TV actors in the cast that those who are familiar with British cinema may well recognise. I'm glad I had the foresight to tape record it as it seems impossible to get hold of a commercial VHS or DVD version.

My enjoyment of this little known movie (I have never seen it screened on TV since) prompted me to buy several of the Lindsay Davis novels in the Falco series a year ago while in Montreal to read on holiday in Cuba and at a Heathrow airport bookstall on the way back to Greece. I have not actually read the novel on which The Age of Treason TV movie is based (could it be Body in The Bath House?). The movie is very much in Lindsay Davis' style. I expected a comedy not an historically accurate account of Roman history in Vespasian's time.And that's exactly what I got, not as zany, totally out to lunch and silly as Carry on Cleo or A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) so the fact that the huge marble head of an emperor carted about by slaves at various times in the movie is that of Constantine the Great born several centuries after the Vespasian era doesn't bother me. I also enjoyed the recent - and rather more though not entirely accurate-HBO-BBC Rome series and the vintage 1975 I Claudius ( Robert Graves books and the 1976 BBC 12 episode low-budget but excellent production). I am not ignorant of Roman History as I studied Latin and Roman history for several years at school.

This is pure entertainment and therefore one should on look for historic accuracy. Bryan Brown is a hilarious comedian and I never mind his Australian accent in Age of Treason, it was just right for the racy kind of person living on his wits that Brown hwas portraying, maybe a Bronx accent would have done as well. Most of the other actors sported posh British public school ones (a minor but not fatal failing of the I Claudius series), except Niobe the bath-house slave who was pure Brixton cockney played to a tee by that charming but nowadays gracefully aging actress Sophie Okenedo. What would one have instead? Modern Sicilian Marlon Brando style? It would be absurd. I any case nobody really knows what kind of accents Romans had in early imperial days and how they would sound in Latin (use of which would have required cumbersome and pointless sub-titles). I haven't laughed at a comedy movie so much since viewing Danny Kayes' The Court Jester at a London theatre in 1955. This is a gem and I review it at least once a year when I'm feeling blue.

This is apparently based on a series of mystery novels about a private eye in ancient Rome (I can't imagine!), but comes across as a convoluted pilot episode for TOGA-PARTY MURDER, SHE WROTE. Still, it's entertaining in a goofy, bad-taste sort of way with it's sex cult and gladiator games being the highlight. Flagrantly Aussie Bryan Brown and Aryan bodybuilder Matthias Hues make quite a pair! Hokey dokey.

Entertaining movie but many unintentionally funny moments. Reminiscent of Hercules and Xena tv series. Bryan Brown's accent is distracting, especially in the narration. Hunky kickboxer Matthias Hues is fun to watch as Justus. Suspenseful plot. "Gladiator" is much better.

I'm not a purist. I don't care if they film the Bible and it comes out as "Top Gun", as long as it is a good movie. This is a good movie and doesn't deserve the bum rap it gets. If it were made in the US we'd have had James Garner in the title role instead of Brian Brown, but who cares. This is a clever story that is well filmed and acted and keeps promising more. It delivers via solid performances and great twists in the plot. I'd kill to have this on DVD or VHS. Watch it on TV and see what you think. I think you'll bemoan the fact this wasn't made into a series or a TV series, at least. This should have been one of those cult films only the acting is probably too good.

It was inevitable that someone should try to make a movie out of Lindsay Davis's Falco novel, which is one of the most original and witty comic-thriller series around currently, but it is a shame that this one fails so badly to convey the humourous detective-noir cynicism of Falco, or the rich supporting cast of characters that Davis employs so well. The visual effects are very good, and Rome looks great, and Brown - accent aside - is a suitable Falco, hardbitten, yet softhearted, but the plot is a mish-mash, drawing elements from the first three Davis novels, and combining them with a new subplot involving Falco owning a gladiator slave, who is forced into a duel to the death with his she-gladiator lover, and another involving a religious cult, resulting in a badly garbled story and a feeble ending. Davis's books would make an excellent series of films, or even a TV series, but the writers will need to do better than this.