“You’ll gladly enslave yourself to Kevin Macdonald’s rollicking sword-and-sandal epic” which is “a beautifully executed piece of pulp fiction”, says Time Out New York of The Eagle. It is, says The New York Magazine, an “unfashionably exciting adaptation“,  and a “rip-snortin adventure tale”  says influential Roger Ebert  of  The Chicago Sun-Times, which another  blog-based reviewer thinks “(is) a real winner ” adding ” …yes, we’ve trod this ground before, you and I, but we haven’t done it quite this well in some time, nor have we had quite this much fun”. Add the Los Angeles Times comment that it has “a strong sense of place that’s unusual for such swashbucklers”, note  NBC Connecticut’s view that it does “an amazing job recreating Roman life” and that a Wall Street Journal journalist believes that “critics are generally taking to The Eagle” – and  let us hope the combined  positive sentiments become the norm, generating viewers and income for the film, and turning some of those who enjoy it into readers of the original Rosemary Sutcliff book The Eagle of the Ninth.

Mind you, her best selling historical novel, a classic of children’s literature and historical fiction, is certainly not itself ‘pulp fiction’ if, as Wikipedia has it, ” … pulp fiction … (denotes) inexpensive fiction magazines (which) were published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, a half an inch thick, and 128 pages long. …”!

• More on The Eagle of the Ninth film and book on this blog
• Focus Features microsite on The Eagle film