A no-frills set of three enjoyable modern epics

This set includes single disc versions of Ridley and Russell's Robin Hood (extended version), Gladiator (original theatrical version) and the underservingly overlooked The Eagle. Extras are thin on the ground since all but the Eagle were originally two-disc sets, but if you're just interested in the films it's a decent package.

It may have revived the big screen epic - and particularly the Roman epic, which had laid dormant since the disastrous failure of 1964's the Fall of the Roman Empire, which this film often copies to less effect - but Gladiator was never really in the top rank of big screen epics.

The script problems that plagued the production are also apparent in a lack of focus that is always a problem when people start building the sets before they have scenes to play in them. There's so much attention to detail in creating the world of the Roman Empire that the supporting characters sometimes get leftovers in this theatrical cut (the extended version available separately corrects that to some degree). Even Russell Crowe's personal journey seems at times poorly developed, reducing the film from a story that affects an empire to a simple revenge story, and a somewhat disappointing one at that. The climactic fight with Commodus is still a major disappointment not just because it's so underwhelmingly staged but because, unlike The Fall of the Roman Empire, the film it relentlessly plagiarises, Commodus is never a credible threat: where Anthony Mann gave him foolhardy courage, Ridley Scott has implied he's a coward throughout until even a wounded hero can't even the odds.

That said, the dialogue never descends to the banalities of 1492: Conquest of Paradise, although the visuals never reach its heights (indeed, John Mathieson's frequently muted photography is often less than impressive). Some of the less vaunted CGI shots are not all that they could be either - the tiger was fine, but the flames in one shot in the battle scene weren't moving in synch with the panning shot while the CGI of the procession into Rome looked less than convincing.

Caveats aside, it's certainly enjoyable (Marcus Aurelius' death scene aside, an ineffectual lift from Blade Runner), and both the character and the film's attitude to death - a reward, reuniting him with his family in Elysium - makes it almost unique in the genre. Despite a handful of strong scenes, it's not great, never reaching the highs of The Fall of the Roman Empire or even its own opening battle sequence (too many of the arena scenes are so over-edited they feel like they've been hacked at with a gladius at times), but it is good. The only extra to survive the original two-disc set is the audio commentary by Ridley Scott, cinematographer John Mathieson and editor Pietro Scalia.

Despite a convoluted and tortuous pre-production history and the participation of two of the more oafish bigheads in the business, Ridley and Russell's Robin Hood is a surprisingly impressive and enjoyable medieval epic that manages to find a new string for the old longbow by placing a prequel to the Hooded Man's outlaw days in a relatively accurately drawn Middle Ages with some contemporary relevance. Admittedly it's going to mean a lot more to British and European audiences, but it's hard not to notice that in its unloving royal siblings Richard (a gruff and bluff Danny Huston) and John (an impressive Oscar Isaac) there's more than a little Tony Blair - vain, bankrupting his abandoned country in unnecessary foreign wars and delusionally regarding himself as a pretty straight kind of guy yet quick to punish anyone who tells him the truth - and Gordon Brown - a petty and spiteful ruler who briefly wins over his people with promises he promptly drops as soon as his throne is secure and is woefully inadequate at turning the economy around. The film even uses the infamous political kiss-of-death phrase 'resigning to spend more time with his family' when honest chancellor William Marshall (William Hurt, looking surprisingly like the director) finds himself out of a job.

There are more nods to James Goldman than Errol Flynn here: Eleanor of Aquitaine gets a few bits of Lion in Winterish sniping without the barbed wit (though John's retort "Spare me your farmyard memories, mother: they're not real and I don't understand them" comes close) while the film begins, like Robin and Marion, with Robin and Little John in the King's bad books for being a bit too honest as the Lionheart loots his way back from the Crusades. There's an even stronger element of Martin Guerre to the tale as well as it finds a plausible explanation for Robin's twin origins as the peasant Robin Longstrides and the dispossessed noble Robin of Locksley, doing a neat job of tying in the origins of the Magna Carta and civil disobedience to the legend in the process.

There's plenty of action too, ending with not one but two big battles, though the grand finale is a bit too Saving Private Robin at times and Cate Blanchet's presence leading a small band of feral children in the climax seems a clumsy contrivance to put her in jeopardy merely so she can be rescued (she's far more convincingly placed heroically centre stage in a raid on her village). Throughout, the money's on the screen, with little apparent CGI - the sets, while not extravagant, have weight to them - and if it could use a few more extreme long shots at times, it makes good use of the British landscape for once. Thankfully Scott doesn't overdo the stylistics or the MTV editing here, settling for good old-fashioned storytelling and even throwing in that long-absent favorite, the burning map montage sequence. As for Crowe, while his accent briefly makes a detour to Newcastle before settling in Barnsley for an initially ill-advised Michael Parkinson impersonation (so much so you almost expect him to say "So, Richard - this Crusades business. Bit of a lark or is there a more serious side to it?"), but luckily he grows in stature alongside the character. And satisfyingly, this film is a real journey, not just from France to England but from opportunist to idealist to legend as Robin's progress mirrors that of the character's evolution from the thug of the early ballads to the champion of the oppressed of modern lore.

While it isn't as good or as ambitious as Kingdom of Heaven, this Robin Hood is still surprisingly damn good entertainment. Unlike the Blu-ray, which offers plentiful extras and both cuts of the film, this edition is just the extended version, which gives more time to the feral children and adds a brief action scene and a comic scene between Robin and Marion but offers no major structural changes as per the Kingdom of Heaven director's cut, and with only additional deleted scenes as extras.

Having its release pushed back to avoid Centurion and its title changed from The Eagle of the Ninth because someone in market research thought it sounded like a golf picture, Kevin MacDonald's The Eagle didn't find much luck at the box-office, which is a shame because this adaptation of Rosemary Sutcliff's much-loved Roman novel is a terrific and almost entirely satisfy old-school adventure story. Channing Tatum is the centurion who asks for a post at the very edge of the empire on the Scottish border in hopes of covering his family name with so much honor and glory it'll drown out the shame that has attached itself to it since his father led the Ninth Legion to an unknown fate north of what would become Hadrian's Wall. Despite getting off to a good start by winning over his men and saving his fortress from attack not once but twice, his career is over almost as soon as its begun when he is invalided out of the legion. Recuperating at his uncle Donald Sutherland's villa where he saves the life of a British slave (Jamie Bell), he sees a chance to challenge fate and redeem the family's honor when rumors start that the Eagle standard of the Ninth Legion have been seen beyond the wall...

Andrew MacDonald's film is very much a classic old-fashioned adventure film seen through modern eyes but managing to avoid many of the clichés of the genre, old and new. It reverses the classic casting approach by almost entirely using American actors instead of British ones for the Romans (with the exception of Mark Strong's Dennis Hopper-like legionary gone native), a conceit which works surprisingly well. Aside from a misjudged shot of a ranting druid and a brief fight with some rogue warriors it avoids the excesses of shakeycam and overediting for a smoother visual approach to the action scenes, the desaturated photography managing to turn the Hungarian and Scottish locations into something that looks almost like a lost world while just managing to avoid the tiresome orange and teal visual clichés of most modern action films. There's even a nicely imaginative use of sound in the climax when the sounds of the final battle are reduced not to the usual silence and soaring orchestral chords but those of the two central combatants in a sequence where the audio briefly becomes more impressive than the visuals. Much of the big action is at the front of the picture, slightly unbalancing it for those hoping for the kind of big action movie it seems to start out as, the scale shrinking as the focus narrows and the landscape conversely expands, but it never feels like its dragging its heels or padding things out.

The film initially manages to give a good sense of how the ancient Roman world worked without letting the details get in the way of the story before plunging into the dark savage world beyond the wall, where hard country breeds harsh tribes with more in common with Native Americans than the usual righteous oppressed locals fighting the empire for their freedom. Indeed, when the hero and his slave go on the run pursued by the relentless Mohican-like Seal People, you could easily be watching a Western. Yet even here the film manages to avoid falling into easy good guy-bad guy stereotyping, with Tahir Rahim excellent as their relentless nemesis, managing to create a believable and human character despite having little to work with. Nor does the film opt for an easy hero/villain position on Rome itself, choosing to stake its colors on heroism and courage on either side. Those expecting an epic or a relentless action movie may be disappointed, but as a large-scale old-fashioned adventure, all in all it's rather terrific.

The DVD offers a decent 2.40:1 widescreen transfer, director's commentary, a perhaps slightly better alternate ending that gives the Eagle itself more value than the one finally used, a couple of deleted scenes (one explaining why Douglas Henshall gets prominent billing for just a couple of shots as a charioteer who Tatum kills: the rest of his part never made the final cut) and a making of featurette.