Legion

If you haven’t quite got the message from Hollywood yet, folks, it’s this: Wake up and smell the diner coffee now, or post-apocalyptic doom awaits us all. Legion by writer/director Scott Stewart is another tale of woe, possibly brought about by human greed, stubbornness and indifference, but like the bizarre assortment of characters in it, stuck in a dusty diner that becomes ground zero in man’s salvation, we are all scratching our collective heads trying to make sense of what’s actually happening? All we know is God is mighty peeved and is sending his angels down to wipe us ‘locust-like’ human species off the planet, but it’s really not clear just what we’ve done to deserve this – apart from our usual list of sins.

Stewart’s tale unashamedly borrows lots of aspects from lots of great apocalyptic tales, such as Constantine, Night of the Living Dead and Terminator – the latter from the beginning to the end, complete with monologue of Sarah Connor lookalike, the bandana-wearing, modern ‘Mary of Nazareth’ Charlie (Adrianne Palicki) who gives birth to the ‘chosen one’. But why her baby is chosen is never explained. For fans of Tremors, it even has the trapped humans defending their diner to the hilt, armed to the teeth up on the roof with some serious fighting power to blast away the possessed souls or ‘vessels’ (sounds like a Scientology lesson) that come for them. Admittedly, before the arrival of the dreary but deviant angel Michael, played by a strangely cast Paul Bettany, this film has a lot of tongue-firmly-in-cheek potential with its cast of misfits led by sarcastic diner owner Bob (Dennis Quaid) and is actually great fun for the first half. Indeed the funniest part with little old lady Gladys Foster (Jeanette Miller) turning out to be an elderly Spider-Gran is shown in the trailer but still proves to be an entertaining watch in full. Then cometh Michael, with all his sanctimonious babble, turning Legion from a bit of a giggle to an absolute hilarious farce – Stewart would have been wise to take a look at something like Tarantino’s From Dusk Till Dawn for how to do ironic fantasy action properly and provide great entertainment. Legion is very wordy, but with all the wrong words and tedious ‘self-confessional’ moments that either make you cringe or yawn.

Bettany plays creepy and sinisterly intense rather well in other films but here, as Michael, he’s as confused as the rest of the humans because he is neither and can’t even ham it up as the story takes itself a little too seriously. In fact the most ludicrous scene in the film, which ends rather abruptly and screams ‘make me a sequel’ (as things get wrapped up a little too quickly and aren’t fully explained), is when our unlikely human hero, mechanic Jeep (yes, the irony, played by the ever-brooding Lucas Black), manages to crash and spectacularly roll his car, complete with mother and child, resulting in the latter coming out of it totally unscathed. Well, he is the chosen one after all.

The plot potholes and nonsense aside, Stewart’s muddled Legion boasts some stylish cinematography but just doesn’t have anything original to deliver and lacks guts – in the literal sense, that is – as there is no new message from the Almighty or the film-makers. The end is a letdown and feels rather rushed, like we are missing huge chunks of narrative that are still lying on the cutting room floor. Nevertheless Legion tries to win fans and pins its hopes on making fantasy film figures like angels as cool as Twilight did with vampires and werewolves – we hear Bible-belt USA rubbing their hands with glee at this free marketing.

All in all, though, maybe God now wishes he’d sent a flood again, aimed at Tinseltown, but if Legion gets us all praying for something more worthy at the box office then His work is done.

Last edited: 7th March 2010

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