Friday, January 22, 2010

Legion

There are certainly a lot of bad movies about angel mythology out there.
Some of them are pretty enjoyable, like The Prophecy and Dogma, and there are tons of crappy ones too, like John Travolta's Michael and It's A Wonderful Life.
Paul Bettany plays a much better archangel than Travolta did, but Legion certainly falls in the lesser category of films.
Despite a storyline that is actually somewhat intriguing, decent acting from the lead angel by Bettany and the promise of much angel-fighting, Legion drowns in poor dialogue and sappy, melodramatic performances from most of the human cast.
The plot has promise, at least for anyone with a passing interest in angel mythos and old-timey biblical vengeance.
God has grown tired of the many ways in which mankind has squandered the many gifts it was given. There is a child in the gestation process that has a possibility to bring light and goodness back to the humans. God says eff it and sends an archangel to Earth to kill the unborn child and his mother.
Michael decides that instead, he will show God the goodness that humanity has save the child from an untimely demise and allow him to grow up and lead us all into the light.
So all of the armies of heaven are now trying to end humanity, which is a fun concept.
So many reasons why this movie could have been enjoyable:
-Angels possessing weak humans to do the dirty work.
-Gabriel coming down from heaven to pick up where Michael's disobedience left off.
-Lots of guns.
-Lots of ammo.
-Lots of explosions.
One main reason that a deity should want to destroy us all:
-The script.
We have two hours of sappy monologues delivered by cliched characters. We have lots of down time for those cliches to blather on and say nothing of importance.
We have very little of the angels fighting each other. The only good part of the whole movie is the promise of biblical vengeance and winged combatants trying to destroy each other. And that is reduced to a few short minutes of screen time that we are forced to wait for while we watch a painful performances of characters that you can't care about if you try.
Legion gets a D if I'm approaching it logically, but an F if I add in my extreme disappointment in the lack of angel fights.
--John Berry, Online Editor--