Bad Girls: Olga Kurylenko – Centurion
The tag line for 2010’s Centurion is “fight or die”, but in a film that features Rome’s Ninth Legion you should have expected many of the characters to do both; fighting and dying, that is. The legendary Ninth Legion is the Roman equivalent of the Roanoke Colony for us Americans. Their mysterious disappearance has led to many a book and movie but no matter how many times I’ve seen the theories on screen I have yet to grow tired of speculating. Throw in a very Last of the Mohicans -style attack by the Picts on the Romans and crazed revenge-fueled model with no tongue and my heart rate jumps up about 30 beats a minute.
Olga Kurylenko plays the tongueless killer mentioned above with a ferocity that is downright shocking. Normally that role would have been played by some Viking-looking dude with a half-shaved head and a beard hanging down to his sack. Maybe part of the surprise came from seeing the lovely Kurylenko swinging around a spear like some deranged flag corp member covered in mud and blood, but there is never a moment when she seems outmatched or unrealistically kicking the crap out of one of the Roman soldiers.
Like the Magua character from The Last of the Mohicans, Olga’s Etain is thought to be a scout for the invading army, trudging along through territory which is foreign in more ways than one. Etain quickly executes the swerve that we all saw coming, leading the Romans into a trap which few survive. Now she hunts the remaining soldiers with the help of the other Picts, relentlessly tracking them and killing them in some brutal action sequences. What also makes Etain a delightful character is that any human with an empathetic bone in their body can understand why she’s doing what she’s doing. She was abducted, raped, violated, and physically scarred at the hands of the Romans as a young girl. Is it any surprise they’ve turned her into a mad dog, hellbent on killing as many of them as possible?
Born in the present day Ukraine, I have been totally on board with Olga Kurylenko’s rise in stardom following her role in the James Bond film Quantum of Solace. She had played smaller roles in a couple of video game movies before that but it was her performance opposite Daniel Craig that turned so many heads in Hollywood for her acting skills instead of just her rocking hot body. Speaking of hot bods…
You’re welcome. It’s what I do.
