For a director with the best horror film of the past decade under his belt (The Descent), it's been hard to get a handle on Neil Marshall--what with his triumph being bookended by the slight-but-fun Dog Soldiers and, more recently, the fan-wank love letter to '80s B-movies Doomsday, an undisciplined mess of a film almost saved by sheer exuberance. Happily, Marshall's latest, Centurion, manages to split the difference between his earlier films, resulting in a taut, suspenseful war film that can also go deliriously excessive when warranted. For anyone burned out on the quick-cut, overly stylized Bruckheimerization of modern action movies, this is the real headbanging deal. by Andrew Wright