Dude, where’s my eagle?

LITTLE ROCK — Maybe the trick is to not make Kevin Macdonald’s action-adventure bromance Western set in antiquity beyond the parameters of history seem more interesting than it in fact is. So let’s call The Eagle - based on Rosemary Sutcliff’s ’50s-era historical novel The Eagle of the Ninth - a dude movie, red meat for the boys who like ringing metal and limbs lopped off.

It’s for boys who deep in their heart still believe there’s something glamorous about soldiering. It’s sort of like a budget version of 300 or Gladiator, and while I was shouted down by a colleague by mentioning it in the same breath as the John Ford classic, it feels a little like The Searchers for Dummies.

In some ways, it’s a silly, outlandish movie that suggests, among other things, that Jamie Bell’s character - a slave named Esca - suffers from Stockholm syndrome. But we’re getting slightly ahead of ourselves there, so let’s set up the rather straightforward premise: About A.D. 120, the Roman Ninth Legion marched into Scotland and was never heard from again - all 5,000 men were lost.

And even worse, so was the Golden Eagle they carried into battle.

Twenty years later, the son of the Ninth Legion’s commander, a pup named Marcus Aquila (the blandly cheerful yet effective Channing Tatum) arrives at his post at a small garrison in Britain, a fort besieged by feral Englishmen none too happy at being occupied. During a battle with the locals, Marcus commits an act of bravery that saves many of his men but leaves him severely wounded. He blacks out and awakens a week or so later, honorably discharged and convalescing in southern England, in the care of his uncle (Donald Sutherland). He’s no longer a soldier, but his heroism has gone a long way to redeeming his family name (“Aquila,” by the way, is Latin for “eagle”).

Yet Marcus is bitterly disappointed to be out of the action. To cheer him up, Uncle takes him to the local gladiator venue, where he watches a bizarre performance by a stoic slave (Bell) who refuses to fight. Even pinned down with a sword to his sternum, he refuses to beg for his life. Marcus recognizes the heroism inherent in the performance, and saves the man’s life. Uncle subsequently presents Marcus with the slave. Though Esca snarls at Marcus that he hates everything he stands for, we know it’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Though he’s injured, Marcus still hasn’t given up his dream of reclaiming the lost eagle for Rome. When he hears a rumor that a group of savages is using the emblem of Rome in its rituals, he and Esca saddle up and head for the high country beyond Hadrian’s Wall, the limits of the known world.

There they will encounter a tribe called the Seal People, a fierce, indigenous tribe (based on nothing more substantial than director Macdonald’s fervid imagination) that manage to evoke the Iroquois and the Na’vi, and for a time the master/slave roles reverse.

The Eagle is an enjoyable film that in no way should be taken as historically literate, let alone accurate. Macdonald has cast mainly Americans as Romans and Britons as the hairy, unwashed natives, which implies a political point.

While you might feel uneasy about the way Rome rolls over the savages, Marcus never seems to question the honorableness of his quest. And for his part, Esca chooses his master - and his friend - over his people. He’s a collaborator, and a pure traitor to the tattooed tribes of Scotland. (The little rat would likely not fare so well in a Ken Loach film.)

Filmed on location in Scotland (and Hungary), the film distinguishes itself from other sword-and-sandal epics by trading back-lot Rome for some genuinely stirring natural vistas, captured by cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, who gives us lush, verdant hills, flinty mountains and blued seascapes.

While the film ends with a default nod to buddy film convention (all that’s missing is the freeze frame as our heroes high five), there is a refreshing simplicity to the movie that effectively disarms any nagging moral questions about empire and Manifest Destiny that dare pop their heads above the parapet. It’s a fun movie to watch, as the Mutt-and-Jeff team of Tatum (broad and linebackerish) and Bell (small, wiry and cunning) romp and fight their way through the feral fodder of imaginary savages. You wait for the line that (sadly) never comes: The only good blueskin is a dead blueskin.

The Eagle 86 Cast: Channing Tatum, Jamie Bell, Mark Strong, Donald Sutherland Director: Kevin Macdonald Rating: PG-13, for battle sequences and some disturbing images Running time: 114 minutes In English, with some Gaelic (subtitled)