Legion
Paul Bettany takes wing in the dreadful Legion
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By Darren Estwick. |  |
Monday, 01, Mar 2010 11:09
Directed by Scott Stewart, out March 5th in cinemas, starring Paul Bettany, Dennis Quaid, Lucas Black, Adrianne Palicki, running time 104 mins.
What's it all about?
As the end of days nears, a disparate group battle for survival in a small diner in the Mojave desert, including owner Bob Hanson (Quaid), his son Jeep (Black), pregnant waitress Charlie (Palicki) and a middle-class family (Kate Walsh, Jon Tenney and Willa Holland). Death and pestilence strike the small outpost but the arrival of a mysterious stranger (Bettany) could save humanity.
As an example...
"That don't look like a test." - Charlie, as the diner TV shows the words "This is not a test".
"Bob, those aren't our regular customers out there." - Percy
What the others say
"Could have been T2 with seraphs, or Assault On Precinct 13 crossed with Revelations. Instead, it's a lazy genre bore. Doesn't bode well for Priest, the next Stewart/Bettany film in the pipeline." - Nick DeSemlyen, Empire
"There are no orgies of planetary destruction; the action almost never leaves the diner, which may be just as well, since a short scene in heaven looks as if it were filmed on the set of a community college Shakespeare production." - Mike Hale, New York Times
So is it any good?
A first-time director with a background in visual effects helming yet another apocalypse movie? Yes, the alarm bells should be starting. But wait - Paul Bettany and Dennis Quaid are in the cast while the plot promises angelic hordes and the wrath of a vengeful God - this might just be an enjoyable B-movie, right? Wrong. Go back to that first instinct, because Legion is a disaster on every level, with sub-par effects, a risible script, wooden performances and a plot holier than 10,000 choirs of angels.
It's such a letdown that the fundamentalist propaganda of the awful Book of Eli looks top-class in comparison while the portrayal of angels is so poorly handled that it could jeopardise a Preacher movie or series ever being completed, lest Garth Ennis' own angelic characters bear any resemblance to the tattooed sub-Terminators on show here.
There are infrequent highlights, with Bettany swallowing his pride long enough to restore some sensibility to the piece in the few quiet moments while there's a bizarre comfort to be taken in the TV movie shallowness of the characterisation, including straight-faced portrayals of a tart with a heart and a well-meaning simpleton.
But, for the soul-destroying majority of its 104 minutes, Legion is horrendous, with a complete absences of scares, lighting and design that's far too sunny for any kind of atmosphere and a script that provokes regular sniggering. Stewart and co-writer Peter Schink might have intended to create one of the funniest films of the year, but there's too little sense about the whole enterprise for it to have been deliberate. We see hilarious revelations of the apocalypse through a foul-mouthed old lady, a swarm of flies that conjures up nightmares of Nicolas Cage's infamous "Not the bees!" cry from the dreadful Wicker Man remake and the typically excellent Doug Jones as a spider-legged ice cream man/demon. We learn that, come the apocalypse, warrior angels will form social tribes, are susceptible to earthly wounds and favour souped-up weaponry more suited to an Uwe Boll film. We are informed that the angel Gabriel, the highest of the heavenly host, will appear as the T1000 played by the Blob from Wolverine while humans will lose all logic but thankfully, will have access to lots of guns.
The idiocy of some of the above might sound as if it's part of a self-consciously dumb genre movie but it's too stilted and cheap to come close to the 'so bad it's good' category.
This is a little more than a substandard 50s drive-in movie - some of the effects and sets look criminally ropey - and while the intention of the talent is sometimes there; the gravity, horror and characterisation necessary to produce any reaction other than mirth simply isn't.
2/10
Lewis Bazley