'The Eagle': Good, Old-Fashioned Storytelling and Values

The anti-everything, post modern worldview that dominates so much of the west long-ago won the battle for Hollywood. For many of us, it gets harder and harder to drop our hard-earned money on movie tickets when we know, nine times out of ten, we are paying to have our cultural, political, and religious beliefs insulted or even mocked by condescending Hollywood elites who believe we are no better than Bin Laden.

What a pleasant surprise it is, then, to discuss director Kevin McDonald’s new film, “The Eagle”, which we do on this week’s Take a Movie to Work video at Declaration Entertainment.

“The Eagle” follows the journey of a Roman centurion named Marcus Aquila as he braves the wilds of Caledonia, the most barbaric region of of the Roman Empire’s most barbaric holding – Britannia.

Aquila searches for the Golden Eagle carried by his father’s legion, the Ninth, which utterly disappeared from history a few years before. Accompanied only by his personal slave, an angry young Briton whom he saved from the gladiator’s sword, Aquila intends to restore his family name, or die in the effort. Along the way, he learns something of the power of trust, friendship, and freedom, all the while never failing to champion his own values – personal honor, bravery, and one rarely ever discussed in today’s world: masculinity.

All of this, plus terrific action sequences and solid performances by Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell, would be enough to recommend “The Eagle” to anyone, but there is a much more refreshing aspect to this film.

The real joy of watching “The Eagle” is what it doesn’t do. In what at this point can only be called a radical departure from convention, “The Eagle” does not sanctimoniously elevate the primitive, indigenous people to an place of undeserved nobility while decrying the civilized Roman invaders as monsters. There is none of the typical racist, anti-civilization, Rousseau and Marx infused western self-loathing that one has come to expect in their Hollywood fare.

For a more complete examination of what “The Eagle” is saying, please see Bill Whittle’s full video on the subject here, and to keep these messages coming, become a Citizen Producer at DeclarationEntertainment.com.