DVD Catch-Up: "The Mechanic" (2011), "The Eagle" (2011)

"THE MECHANIC" (2011)
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Slick with its gunplay and gleefully violent, Simon West's The Mechanic moves at warp speed, looks good doing it, but ultimately, it's a meat-headed, perverse little mess. 
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Arthur Bishop (Jason Statham) is a hitman who takes in a reckless, impudent troublemaker (Ben Foster) after killing his father (Donald Sutherland) in the film's second of many mandated hits. Why Arthur would want to take him in is a question the film seems uninterested in answering. 
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Nevertheless, gratuitous action scenes and climb-the-corporate-ladder vengeance is taken, all before the obligatory modern action film bait-and-switch conclusion. It's come to the point where now we can't even make a good revenge flick anymore, The Mechanic is simply too precarious to enjoy. [C-]
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"THE EAGLE" (2011)
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Although exquisitely produced and almost distractingly gorgeous, Kevin Macdonald's The Eagle is one listless, automated action-adventure film concerning the infamous disappearance of the Roman Ninth Legion. (A popular film subject of late, if you saw Neil Marshall's Centurion, released just last year.)
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Channing Tatum plays Marcus Aquila, a young Roman officer looking to restore his family name after his father led the Ninth to their apparent doom and inevitable shame in the eyes of Rome. Marcus plans to sneak in through Hadrian's Wall and retrieve the Eagle with the help of his newly adopted slave, Esca (Jamie Bell), a native of the Northern lands.
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The action scenes are chaotic and nearly unintelligible, but its the film's quieter moments that are even more inept, teetering on the testy, distrustful (and sexually ambiguous) relationship between two of the more colorless characters of recent memory. [C]