Entertainment

Epic’s bird-brained

In the second century A.D., a le gion of Roman men disap peared in northern Britannia — yet “The Eagle” is not about their mysterious defeat. It’s set 20 years later, when the son of the legion’s fallen commander travels the length of the island to recover the legion’s lost golden standard.

It’s a long way to go for a hood ornament.

Directed by Kevin Macdonald (“The Last King of Scotland”), “The Eagle” is a long slog through ancient muck, so-so sword fights and dumb luck.

Channing Tatum is incoming Roman commander Aquila, a sulky slab haunted by visions of his missing father while he runs a garrison in the south. To exercise his slaying muscles, he orders his men out of their nice comfy fort and into an open field to take on some barbarians who have captured a small patrol, pretty much guaranteeing he’ll lose more men than were caught in the first place. For these actions, he receives medals — and involuntary early retirement.

Slipping into a gladiator matinee, he inexplicably defends a lackluster, apparently suicidal slave named Esca (Jamie Bell) who isn’t even pretending to put up a fight. By random chance, Esca is also a member of the tribe that (hundreds of miles away, at a time when most people never strayed far from where they were born) slaughtered Aquila’s father and his troops.

It takes more than half an hour before the movie even tells us its point: that, to rebuild Daddy’s rep, Aquila will take his new pet slave and journey north, beyond Hadrian’s Wall, to track down the missing golden eagle.

Wheezy fights soak up some screen time (stealthy assassins sneak up behind the protagonists with pointy weapons and . . . wait until they’re noticed, at which point they submit to being demolished as ruthlessly as a carrot cake in a newsroom), and Aquila tries to figure out which side Esca is really on. (Could Esca possibly be miffed that Aquila’s fellow Romans wiped out his family?) Aquila finally stumbles on the eagle by random chance, at which point the tribe that has been imprisoning him remembers he’s their bitter enemy.

Neither Esca nor anyone else will be able to figure out why Aquila is so fixated on this gilded bird. It isn’t like it has magical properties. Nor will recovering it prove anything about Aquila’s father. “The eagle is Rome,” Aquila declares. Sure, if the most powerful empire on Earth = shiny knickknack.