The Lost Legion

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!)

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.

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.

Just to make things clear, have no prejudice against low-budget films despite how my recent reviews as part of my low-budget film quest implies. There are actually good ones out there that may not be the most visually accomplished but surmount that with doing other components well. There are also really lame and often even worse ones out there.

'The Lost Legion' is not one of the worst examples out there or of the ones seen recently by me. There is a huge amount wrong with it and the flaws are major, quite a lot of it is amateurish, but 'The Lost Legion' at least didn't insult my intelligence as much as other films that were part of the quest and there was a little effort put into a couple, emphasis on couple, of elements that they didn't have.

Its least bad elements are that the costumes don't look as ugly fancy dress/shoe-string budget as one would fear.

Also Brian Caspe's performance is fun to watch, because he not only tries but he enjoys himself too.

Nothing else good going on here sadly. The acting elsewhere lacks any kind of passion or emotion, even skill or direction, with an uncharismatic central performance and a bland and charmless female lead. Only Caspe comes out unscathed.

'The Lost Legion's' uncharismatic, wimpy and annoying character writing and writing that is far too excessively ridiculous to be guilty pleasure cheese and too awkward and dull to be tongue in cheek works against them. As well as non-existent direction.

Direction that fails to convey any urgency, tension, fun, suspense or emotion in the numerous scenes that need them. The action-oriented scenes, the few there are any, are the complete anti-thesis of exciting, are poorly filmed and looks so awkward in the choreography. The whole story is just lifeless, completely fails to make any sense at all and on the wrong side of daft that it's insultingly ridiculous. Nothing suspenseful or fun here and the lack of attention to visual and historical detail does annoy.

Visually, 'The Lost Legion' looks cheap as sin, with an overuse of truly risible effects that never gels with the setting or looks real, dizzying camera work and editing and shoe-string budget production design. The music is ill-fitting and not appealing on the ear.

In summation, nothing glorious and very chaotic. 2/10 Bethany Cox

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.