Legion a B-Movie Bore
In a dusty deserted diner in the middle of the Mojave Desert the angel Michael (Paul Bettany) has fallen from the heavens in order to save mankind from God’s furious vengeance. He’s given up, decided we’re no longer worth it thanks to our penchant for self destruction, and even though young waitress Charlie (Adrianne Palicki) is pregnant with a child who could save the world he’d rather wipe us out now rather then see if the kid grows up to fulfill their potential.
Paul Bettany is an angel with a gun in Screen Gems' Legion
I’d go into all this more but I’m not sure what the point would be. The simple truth is that after a rather intriguing start former visual effects technician Scott Stewart’s writing and directing debut Legion quickly becomes a frustrating and tedious bore. The movie is basically a thinly veiled Rio Bravo and Assault on Precinct 13 (circa John Carpenter, not the 2005 remake) rip-off only lacking the energy, excitement or tension that made both of those such smashing successes.
But this one sadly wastes its B-movie pedigree and just sits there doing absolutely nothing of consequence. For almost two hours people stare at one another in fear, have long discussions about family and togetherness, engage in endless theological debate and then fire off round after round of ammunition for no real reason other than to apparently wake the audience up from their catatonia. This is a movie that wastes its tried and true premise in an ocean of talk, the whole thing filled with so much downtime it’s hard to get excited those rare moments when excrement actually does hit the fan.
Too bad, really, because the cast does all they can to try and make this snoozer worthwhile. Dennis Quaid, Tyrese Gibson, Charles S. Dutton, Kate Walsh and Willa Holland all turn in commendable performance as some of the unlucky patrons trapped in the diner, while Kevin Durand oozes just the right mixture of menace and uncertainty as fellow angel Gabriel sent to Earth to do what Michael could not. Bettany is a solid hero, while “Friday Night Lights” and “Supernatural” starlet Palicki is far more effective as the harried mother of the future of mankind than I’d remotely expected her to be.
No, the problems here have nothing to do with the cast (although Lucas Black’s depressive one-note turn came perilously close to wearing me out) and everything to do with both Stewart’s script and his direction. The movie goes on and on for no apparent reason, the newbie filmmaker hammering home the melodramatic overtones of his end of the word thriller as if they were a railroad spike and he was John Henry slamming it home. It’s emotionally inert, any thrills it might have had drowned in a sea of boredom so deep I almost felt like I needed to decompress after it was over.
Sony and Screen Gems declined to screen Legion for the press before its release and it’s easy to see why. In the end this is just another movie that feels like a prequel to sequels we’re never going to see. The thing is, because the pacing is so poor and the script so threadbare I doubt audiences are going to care. By the time it was over it was all I could do to stop from yawning, and if God were one of us I’m sure after watching this he’d probably have been doing to same.
Film Rating: ê1/2 (out of 4)
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