Last Legion - 4 stars out of 5 stars

It's hard to do a prequel to a beloved unproven legend.See "Enterprise"for the Star Trek fans out there and you'll see what I mean.There is the "King Arthur and the Knights of the round table in Camelot"that I grew up on but is debated to this days if there was even a King Arthur.No matter,it created many movies,books and even a TV series.It takes a lot of guts to attempt a prequel to such a story.Thats why this movie is to be respected.It starts by explaining what happened to the last Caesar as Rome fell by having him flee to Britannia with a Merlin like teacher and there he survives and his grandson becomes King Arthur.Simple but makes it fun and believable and most of all get people to see it.There is a selling point and they choose the little known history of 300 years of occupation by Rome of what is now Great Britain.Tying together a desperate flight to save a boy/Caesar and spin it with the end of that 300 year rule and the birth of a new Kingdom in the form of Arthur makes a good story if done right and here I have no complaints.There is a fine sub story tying Spains Moorish/Islamic occupation into the story as well,though I think the time line might not fit so good,but so what,its all a fantasy not historic fact.That was the reason I saw the movie to begin with.In this tie-in they cast one of my favorite actors,Alexander Siddig as Theodorus Andronikos emissary from the Eastern Empire in Constantinople to help with the relocation to Britannia of the young Caesar and turning back the Legion there to retake Rome.In his service is a masked Islamic warrior who turns out to be a woman.They say she was from India,but I doubt it was called that back then.All this mixes for a fine story that sounds plausible with what we do know of that time and a few nods to the future of the English Empire are made.If this sounds exciting then see it.I took 1 star off because of what  I thought was the error in the Spain/Moor/Constantinople connection that early but I might be wrong . The cast includes Colin Firth as Aurelius Centurion to the young Caesar and Ben Kingsley  as teacher Ambrosinus / Merlin to the young Caesar and Aishwarya Rai  as Mira the female warrior and finally  young Thomas Brodie-Sangster as the young Caesar Romulus Augustus  and a good supporting cast as well.Trailer URL below pix as usual and the film was released in 2007 at 102 minutes

 http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi2599747865/