Legion

“Legion”. “Legion”. “Legion”. Why? I mean you had the potential to at least be ok, maybe even good. Did you live to that potential? Obviously not since I have to ask, but that just begs the question of what even qualifies as potential anymore. I mean this movie called itself an epic. It said it was a visual spectacle. Hell, my interest was at least peaked, and I’m a bitter movie curmudgeon that loves nothing until it actually shows the goods! Plus, I’ve said over and over that I am sadly having to be more and more of the opinion that the action genre has had it’s time and would probably be better off just dying off, but some movies just want to cling to the idea that they can bring it back in some fused or bastardized form. Sometimes that can be interesting and fun like “From Dusk Till Dawn” or “Sin City”, or bad like… Well, this movie. I’m sorry in advanced to this movie’s defenders, odd enough as it is that this movie has defenders, but this movie just blows. I mean it’s just bad.
Let me count the ways, shall I? Let’s start with the story. Now, while I’ve been a big defender of “Avatar”, despite the fact that the movie’s story is largely borrowed from at least three sources, it doesn’t bug me. I notice it, but in a way, the three films it “steals” from are actually improved in its story and don’t really feel like they are being stolen, more added upon. It’s taking something that was done once, and either combines it with something else or does it much better. For example, many people say that “Avatar” was simply a rehash of “Dances with Wolves”, a film that I just can’t stand. Odd really, since I loved “Avatar”, maybe it was just the first time “Dances with Wolves” was actually interesting enough to grab me after the first hour this time, I don’t know.
Now, I’ve said all that to say that I’m one of those guys that can sit there and find so many other stories that have been used for plays or movies or what have you. Normally, I'm actually not that peeved about it, because usually, at least SOME effort is made to hide the new movie as it's own creation. But really, this movie just can’t seem to figure out what it wants to…. Rip off. God I hate that term, but there is nothing else to describe this! I mean wow! In this movie, in one sitting, I pulled out “Evil Dead”, “The Omen”, and “The Terminator” of all things. I mean this is just shoddy at best. This is a movie that was either written by producers, or it was something they tried to tailor as something "new", but then again, maybe the joke’s on us here and they just want a laugh on the way to the bank with our money.
Let’s talk about action sequences, because what are those anymore? I mean the director here seems to have an idea, because most of the time he seems to know how to make them fun, yet halfway in, and I’m not kidding here, he turns the lights off. I’m not joking; he just flat cuts the lights at least three times! I wouldn’t mind since this movie kind of tries to be horror at times, but the amount of action leading up to the lights going out, is really just too much. When it happens I’m not so much scared, as pissed that now I can’t see anything and my cool action sequence is ruined by the horror aspect trying to butt in. That's even another problem, the horror in this movie is silly. When the evil old lady first appears and starts fucking people up, I just laugh because, while I'm sure the point is to show that the Angels add strength when possessing people (yeah, Angels possess people here.) this just comes off as hilarious. I'm sorry but seeing an old woman throw Dennis Quaid across the room is just fucking funny! It’s a perfect example of a genre combo that is just poorly executed… Along with pretty much everything else in this movie actually, because nothing is really done well.
The script is just pathetic, and I really mean pathetic. It’s all: “What’s going on?!” and “Why me?” and a lot, and I really mean this, A LOT of exposition. Seriously for every minute of something actually happening in this movie, there is at least five minutes of talking. This movie is about an hour and 40 minutes, so that means that of 100 minutes of total run time, we get about 20 minutes, if that of either bad action or bad horror. The rest is literally just explaining the plot. What really pissed me off was at the end where in the middle of a fight they’ve been building the whole movie, they just stop and have a pow wow to talk about stuff. THIS. ISN’T. FILM-MAKING!!! In fact this scene tries to be more like a play, and normally I’m down with that idea. But when you’re movie’s built as an action/horror film, well it’s out of place to be nice, and horribly idiotic in all other cases.
That and the performances are just shit. Dennis Quaid, who I mentioned in my “Pandorum” review, makes an appearance and frankly needs to fire his agent. I mean wow, I may have given him shit for “Pandorum”, but this guy really is not that bad an actor. I loved “Innerspace” and “Dragonheart”, his performance in both in particular, it’s just sad to see him here. Although much sadder is Paul Bettany. If I may directly speak to the actor, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?! I wouldn’t care if you were actually someone that had not had a good run in movies, but you were in no less that TWO Best Picture nominees in less that four years, and “Firewall”, while silly at times, was actually slightly successful and hell; “The Da Vinci Code” was actually largely successful. I’d understand if you were hurting for work, but I don’t see you as being particularly hard pressed with credits like that! I mean those two are just the cream of the crop outside of Charles S. Dutton, who steals the show no matter what he does anyway, and really, the rest of the cast is dull, uninteresting and just vastly underdeveloped.
That really goes back to the writing. I hate to harp on it, but that’s really the movie’s biggest flaw. It’s just so obviously not even trying, and that’s what’s so aggravating! All the main characters are built up in about 5 minutes, if that, and then the rest is basically this: “God’s pissed. He’s going to kill us with angels and we have to protect this woman to live, got it?” I’m sorry, and it isn’t that I’m a strong Christian or anything, but I frankly would be embarrassed to have a movie this bad closely associated with my faith.
This movie is dumb, redundant, bland, haphazardly written and just doesn’t make for a good time. I actually have a friend that loves bad movies like this for joking purposes, and HE was evening cursing the director’s name at the end. That just tells you how much of a miss this movie was. It missed the point completely, and honestly I can’t even call it a movie worth renting.