The Rebels

This is that filler episode you see where the four leads go off and try to survive on their own for a weekend, and so you get a lot of talking about life and other stuff, but no real action. Throw in that there's no sex, the drug scene is tame, and the four have no idea what they're doing in the woods despite living on the edge of them their entire lives, and it's just boring.

There's a decent battle scene at the end, but there's just too much happening off-screen that should be on-screen.

The film would have been a lot shorter if it wasn't for the pauses for cinematographic effect. The acting is wooden, the script appalling and the general storyline like a Famous Five plot but without the dog..although to be fair a dog did come and stare at the lead character for a few seconds.

They ran out of food on day 2 then for the next 5 or 6 days they sat around all playing around or moping instead of looking for food. Even when they were at the beach instead of fishing or digging up some shellfish they decide to have another play around. Good battle and fight scenes at the end.

Maybe the low rating of this movie is due to wrong expectations: when reading the synopsis you might think you're in for a high paced historical action-movie, with dashing young rebels challenging and fighting the ferocious Roman occupying soldiers. Well, that's not the case. It's actually a much more sober coming-of-age-like story. The four youngsters that flee their village have no idea what to do or where to go, and in time they have to cope with the cruel outside world, with each others habits and with the consequences of their deeds. At least this side of the movie is not that bad.

On the other hand, the whole project is a bit lackluster, even the photography, and it's actually hard to believe that this is a movie from 2019, it could as easily have dated from the eighties. It's obviously very low budgeted, settings and costumes are very basic and look cheap and unconvincing, especially those of the Roman soldiers. There are some fighting-scenes but rather clumsily staged. The young actors are good-looking and do their best, but leave no lasting impressions.

And then there's this thing with the dialogues: these four native Brit adolescents from the first century BC talk with a vocabulary as if they're 21'st century high school mates! Of course this cannot be an unfortunate error, I guess mr. Emmet Cummins (writer and director) has had a deliberate purpose with it, but if so, I fail to grasp it. Could it really have been his intention that most of the audience would experience this as utterly anachronistic and with that a bit preposterous?

In short: disappointing, it hardly reaches the standard of a teen movie.

WHY did this film need to be set in the 1st Century? The setting comes off as a really cheap Medieval Faire. The detail of the four main characters is utterly missing. They're supposed to be Welsh, but sound and look like 21st Century UK college kids in costumes. For a limited budget production, the vision is all over the place. The youth are attractive, but I doubt this project will be a prize in any of their résumés.