LEGION
 
STARRING: Paul Bettany, Dennis Quaid,
Tyrese Gibson, Jon Tenney, Charles S. Dutton, Lucas Black, Kate Walsh, Doug
Jones, Adrianne Palicki, Kevin Durand, Willa Holland
2010, 100 Minutes, Directed by:
Scott Stewart
 Coming
just a week after the holy roll of The Book of
Eli is Legion, a film decidedly more literal about its heavenly
intentions, pitting angels versus humans in a war for the future of
civilization.
Sound pretty cool, right?
Well, Legion is quite
the opposite; it’s a labored, darkly photographed, cringingly acted hodgepodge
of fanciful geek-bait genre ideas and hideous connect-the-dots scripting. Who
knew the end of the world could be such a screaming bore?
After God loses faith in
humankind, he summons a swarm of destruction to wipe out Earth, with special
attention placed on the unborn child of a truck stop waitress named Charlie
(Adrianne Palicki, TV’s Friday Night Lights). Michael (Paul Bettany) is a
rogue archangel who’s arrived to protect the fetus, making his way to Charlie’s
remote location armed to the teeth.
Corralling the locals (Dennis
Quaid, Charles Dutton, Lucas Black), some patrons (including Kate Walsh), and a
passer-by (Tyrese Gibson) into the fight, Michael and the gang turn the truck
stop into a bunker, while waves of angels, demons, and plagues violently arrive,
on the hunt for the baby. Fearing the arrival of rival archangel Gabriel (Kevin
Durand), Michael pushes Charlie into labor, hoping whatever she gives birth to
will be the key to stop the obliteration of humanity.
Legion marks the
directorial debut of visual effects craftsman Scott Stewart, and his
inexperience shows all the way through the motion picture. Legion is divided up
into two parts: one half devoted to fancy effects depicting the evil angel
onslaught, and the other set aside for a team of unlikable characters to
endlessly drill exposition into the picture.
|
"Legion takes an eternity to go nowhere . . ." |
The screenplay by Peter Schink
and Stewart is one of the clumsiest, most awkward pieces of filmic writing I’ve
heard in a long time, clueless where to comfortably take this wild Armageddon
premise. All these angels, machine guns, and B-list faces, and Legion ends up
astronomically tiresome, teeming with idiotic dialogue bluntly performed by a
limited cast visibly unable to compute if the material is high camp or gothic
catnip.
Legion is slow and
unnecessarily verbal, spending more time developing characters than getting down
to machine-gun business. Perhaps it’s a budget issue (everyone knows angels are
expensive), or maybe Stewart is just that green a filmmaker. Either way,
Legion takes an eternity to go nowhere, occasionally stopping to stage an
attack sequence or a gore moment. It’s just not enough.
Also lacking is the film’s
religious overtones, which read more Marvel Comics than biblical. Here, the
angels have metallic, bullet-proof wings and blow holes in walls that leave the
flaming outline of a cross - not really the stuff one might find in the average
King James. Stewart isn’t out to offend, but the shortage of truly daring
Jesus-fu is disappointing.
I ask, dear reader, what would
you rather see: majestic angels tearing through the sky, raining fire from the
heavens or acting-impaired Tyrese Gibson stumble through a lumbering monologue
about his days as a “shorty”? The problem with Scott Stewart? He’d rather watch
Gibson.
Legion is dreadfully
edited, lit seemingly by a single book of matches (it’s impossible to make out
long stretches of the film), and bravely sets up a sequel in the finale.
Something tells me it’ll take a miracle from heaven for that to happen. It’s a
dopey horror-action mishmash, but Legion doesn’t quite understand its own
potential. Instead of causing divine damage, the movie commits the ultimate sin
of tedium.
- Brian Orndorf
|
