Legion | Action | rated R (L,V,G) | starring Paul Bettany, Dennis Quaid, Tyrese Gibson, Charles Dutton, Kate Walsh | 1:40 mins
At a diner called Paradise Falls in a desert middle of a nowhere, a group of employees and broken down travelers find themselves on the outskirts of the biblical apocalypse. Soon the phones are out, posessed travellers start attacking patrons and fallen angel Michael (Paul Bettany) comes knocking to help them ward off the attacking plagues and save the unborn life of a waitress’s child, who somehow holds the key to saving humanity from being exterminated by God’s army of angels.
Legion is a religious movie about God, angels and biblical prophecy for athiests. A movie that seems to have no idea the mythology behind it’s characters. A bastardized Hollywood action movie that takes reinvents them as assault rifle totting tough guys. The premise, that God has sent his own angels instead of a flood to possess humans and wipe out humanity is so ridiculous, such a gleeful poke in the eye of the staunchly faithful, that had it been handled with just the right amount of quirk and creativity it could have been a cult classic along the lines of Kevin Smith’s more reverant Dogma. As is it is a frustratingly humorless epic end-of-the-world story crammed inside a movie without the budget or imagination to tell it. We never feel like we’re in the middle of the apocalypse, we’re just outside of it. Heck, Feast got more mileage from it’s claustrophobic bar setting then this movie does with a fraction of the budget.
But alas, the best way to answer a bad movie is with a good movie. I’ll side-step my dislike of directly comparing movies by directly comparing Legion to a TV show. A TV show that almost nobody watches. A TV show that delivers horror movie quality thrills and has created a fully realized mythos better than that of 99% of horror movies – Supernatural. Created by Eric Kripke and starring Jensen Ackles and Jared Padelecki, Supernatural began as two brothers who hunt demons and creatures of campfire ghost story legend with fake FBI badges, shot guns and rock salt. Over the course of 5 seasons the story evolves to put Sam and Dean Winchester at the center of the apocalypse in which demons try to free Lucifer and the armies of heaven and hell, in human vessels, seek to bring about the end of the world. Supernatural gets right in spades everywhere Legion drops the ball. It’s almost not even fair.
A 45 minute episode of Supernatural is more entertaining, satisfying, creative, character rich and abiding by the rules of it’s self-contained universe then 100 minutes of Legion, an opus that appears to be making it up as it goes along. Director Scott Charles Stewart gives us a few glimpses of cool action scenes and then ineptly hides the rest of it in the dark. Putting underwritten characters in a dimly lit setting and having trade stock dialog until the next demon literally pulls up to the diner for them to shoot. We get lots of cryptic dialog about what someone would do for Him (big H). A story with high stakes the details and motivations for which are never actually filled in for us. Stewart seems to shy away from his own story, awkwardly jostling back and forth between making an action movie and a horror movie. When arch angel Michael has a final knock-down drag-out with follower Gabriel you’d think it would be a bit more epic than a measly little fight in a diner. These two handle the place gingerly enough to not do any real damage.
I feel like I’m still owed my killer angels with assault rifles movie. Legion is an absurd movie, full of plot holes nobody bothered to explain and without a hint of a self-aware sense of humor. And it remains deadly serious right up through the movie world’s millionth guy-turns-on-the-oven-gas-says-a-one-liner-and-lights-a-match scene. If you’re even thinking about seeing it you’re better off checking out Supernatural. Similar story, terrifically told.
