Movie Review: Legion

What do you expect from a film that has the name of a demon, the revisioned plot of Armmagedom on Earth, and Angels that are anything but angelic? In general you get a mix of The Prophesy, Terminator, and perhaps a bit of the Road Warrior.

I realize that is an odd mix of generally good to great films. And to put them all together in one film sounds strange, and unlikely. Yet Legion does all of that. Sadly the end product is not as good as any of its parts.

Let's just jump right into the plot. God has suddenly lost faith in humanity. No reason why or why now. Yet there is an unborn child that can save humanity; from what is never stated. We can stop right there.

I'm not the most religious individual. But my understanding of God, in any religion, is that the closest non-religious word would be omnipotent. How could anything stop God? Ok, taking a slightly different tack, the Angels. They are powerful beyond belief, smoting entire cities and virtually beyond comprehension to see. The Archangels are even more powerful than that.

So in this movie, these powerful beings have no choice but to takeover the bodies of the innocent (children) and weak-willed to try to kill the mother of the would be future savior. Hello Terminator. Except not one of these possessed beings has a gun, blowtorch, lighter, not even so much as a wiffle ball bat. They won't even use their cars to get into a small, unfortified, old diner where the unborn child is at.

Ok, here I am thinking again. If this is all to kill the child, why wait until mere days before the birth? Angels are not restricted by time. Why not go back to the conception of the child, or the birth of the mom-to-be? Why not have Gabriel (one of the Archangels) walk in at the very begining and kill her then? Or have a city smoting lesser angel turn the diner and all in it to salt?

Ok, over thinking. Back to the movie.

Michael (another Archangel) chooses to become human to save this woman. So he goes out to the diner in the middle of nowhere just in time for fending off the horde of possessed humans that arrive. Not that their overwhelming numbers are used to swarm the diner. All of this leading to a confrontation between the now human Michael and Gabriel.

Simply put the plot sucks. There is just too much to try to suspend your belief on. This requires more than a leap of faith it requires absolutely the vaccuation of thought.

But if you think the action will save this film, give the movie a reason to charge $9 a ticket, you will again be disappointed. There is a small bit of gunplay, mostly after the middle of the film. It's short lived, much like half of the cast. Truely there is nothing impressive about the effects or the action. Many B-movies have more and better.

So what about the cast? Well there is Paul Bettany who is a good actor and becoming a known name. He also has a penchant for quasi-religious characters (he was the albino in The DaVinci Code). He is Michael and does a decent job of being brooding, direct, and less than comforting. His action scenes are fair, and he is moderately believeable given the shortcomings of the plot.

Charles Dutton plays a short-order cook with only one hand and a prosthetic hook. You get the feeling, though it is never clear, that he might have been in Viet Nam. Of course since my father had the same prosthetic and was a vet I may be projecting. Beyond that, the character is unremarkable. He looks concerned when he should, rushes around like everyone, and dies a noble but useless death.

Then there is Dennis Quaid. Like Dutton, far better an actor than this film deserves or requires. He is the father of a key character and owner of the forlorn diner. He is a grizzled man who gave up on life as all his dreams crumbled around him. Bitter about his divorce 5 years earlier, and as lost as everyone else in this film. Quaid is believable and adds a lot of credibility to the film, but can't save it. Ditto the noble death.

I have to mention Tyrese Gibson because he is the next most well known actor in the film. His role is the obligatory thug/gangsta wannabe, with a heart. The best that can be said about his role and acting is that it does not distract from the film. He is a useless character that likely got to die a noble (but obvious and stupid) death because of Gibson's ability to draw a female and/or ghetto audience.

The effects are common and less than spectacular. The best ones can be seen in the movie trailer for the film. Actually much of the action is in the trailer as well.

The photography is at times good and adds to the atmosphere of isolation and despair, like Road Warrior. At it's worst it is too dark and murky.

The directing is on par with a B-film. You never get to feel the intensity or impending doom after the first 10 minutes of the film. In fact it feels like there was 2 seperate ideas in the film - the first more of a Terminator feel, the second more of a Prophesy rip-off.

When it's all said and done, this film is forgettable. It does not live up to the quality of the movie trailer (whoever made that should get a raise and more work). I'd more likely buy this as a DVD ($10 or so) so I could see what extras were pulled from the film, or just watch it on cable some night when insomnia had hold of me.

Do yourself a favor and don't see this film. There is a reason this was released in January, and it lives up to that reason alone.

Movie Preview: Legion

Looking forward to 2010 another disaster awaits mankind. I don't mean the Mayans, Health Care Reform, Cap & Trade, or the mid-term elections. No this will be far worse. This will be an act on high.

At least that is the premise of Legion. It is another in a long line of films that pose the question, what if religious deities (or their minions) decided that mankind had to go. This was probably best done in the low-budget but fan favorite The Prophecy with Christopher Walken.

Legion takes much from that film, using angels as the means as the end of mankind. But this time man has an ally. The Archangel Michael. And there is a secret weapon in the form of a baby that can save us all. That part comes from Dogma I think. Or maybe Terminator, your choice.

In terms of the looks, it's a better than average film. There are lots of CGI effects that work. The tone matches the dark skies and lighting. The desolate feel of a desert standoff matches the sense of desperation the characters are dealing with.

Here is the video so you see what I mean.



The thing that stands out immediately to me is the number of quality actors and the time the film will be released. The film has veterans like Charles Dutton and Dennis Quaid. Both are excellent actors and can being a lot of credibility to the film. Then again the film also has Tyrese Gibson. We can hope he dies early in the film.

Paul Bettany as Michael looks like a good choice too. He has a good feel from what we can get from the movie trailer. You may recall Bettany best for his role in the DaVinci Code, but he has also been in A Beautiful Mind, Knight's Tale, and will be in Iron Man 2 (as the voice of Jarvis as in Iron Man).

Really the big question is the plot. Does it make sense. Can these mere mortals and 1 angel (given that he is 1 of the 3 Archangels [religious scholars may know of more of them]) hold out against a horde of other lesser angels (and another Archangel, Gabriel)? Would God really kill off humanity? What about the last Archangel, Lucifer. Surely in such a battle, with the stakes being so high and for a commodity that has a value to Lucifer, that fallen angel would not just sit it out.

I think the entire film is about faith. A test of faith for mankind and the angels - actually the Archangels. It's a question of how far would you go to save/help someone you don't know because you believe it will result in some good, but you have no facts or even clues that you are right.

This film will either work or fail because of the writing. The Prophecy was low budget, with only Walken being the big prize. But the writing made the story work, and fans stuck with it so much that 3 more sequels were made. This is the bigger budget cousin of that idea. And without a good script all the names are just a write-off on a bad marketing gimmick.

Of course the fact I review films constantly gives me a somewhat jaded view. The reason I have doubts about the film really comes from 2 things. The first is that the 3rd Archangel seems to be missing from the film. That means the writers weren't smart enough to include him. Which means there are going to be big gaps in logic. Not a good sign.

The other is what I alluded to earlier. This film will be out January 22, 2010. That's almost the start of the film year. It is almost always a time when the very worst ideas that have been sitting on shelves are thrown out and forgotten about. There has been almost no movie of worth that has come out that early in a year. This could be a sleeper hit, but I don't think that was the intention on this. It has too much money behind it.

No, for all their faults a bunch of Hollywood execs saw the final product and had a problem with the film. They could be wrong, and I would like that as both Bettany and Dutton could use a boost, but I doubt that.

Still I probably will go see this just because I like Bettany and Dutton. So now you know.

Movie Preview: Pandorum

Well at least Hollywood is consistent. That’s the first impression I get from the movie trailer for Pandorum.



Instantly you get the feeling that the movie is a mix of sci-fi horror movies – specifically Alien – and the recent rash of video games. The fact that the producers of the movie are also the ones responsible for the Resident Evil movies just adds to the sense of a video game conversion.

The movie trailer is supposed to give you the feeling of impending doom, yet I just get the memory of the movie Doom. It’s filmed in dark shadows to emphasize the danger. I just think it’s harder to see what’s happening. The big question in the film is whether or not the main characters are really living through this horror or are they just imagining it all. The trailer doesn’t really make me care.

Obviously the film will be doing a series of flashbacks, to show how the crew all met their demise. Likely there will be some video record to show how they inevitably went to some planet, and picked up something. That something became the object of suspicion as crew members died. If this sounds familiar, it should be. Countless numbers of video games and movies has used the same plotline, from Alien, as their theme.

Now I could be completely wrong. And the movie could be quite good. But appearances don’t seem to support those possibilities. More likely this film is perfect for those that want to sit in a theater and have a couple of gotcha moments for an hour and a half. It will be like playing an ok video game without any of the effort. Something you can forget completely once you get up from your seat. Which is not always a bad thing.

Suffice to say I am not impressed yet. I am surprised that Dennis Quaid is in the film. Normally he is pretty good a picking his films. Which means that either the trailer was put together badly, and the film has far more potential than what is presented, or they paid a lot of money to have a name attached to the film and Quaid will barely be in the movie.

There is still time for more trailers to come out. More of the storyline will be seen and either I am right in my gut instinct that this is a good $5 DVD bin movie, or it will be a decent horror sci-fi film. At this moment, I have to go with my gut, and recommend seeing the DVD of Dead Space until this hits the DVD in 6 months or so.