Legion

A new kind of movie is taking Hollywood by storm – let’s call it the, “you’ve got to be kidding me” genre. Films with story so ridiculous you need to have a pencil shoved up your nose (into your brain) to believe what you’re seeing. THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, DEEP IMPACT, ARMAGEDDON, anything with Ben Affleck (oh wait, is he still acting?) – some prime examples and now Sony Picture’s LEGION.

The 26 million dollar (US) apocalyptic action thriller’s premise is God has had enough of humanity and all of its (our) stupidity. The divine One orders his angel soldier, “Michael”(Paul Bettany, THE DA VINCI CODE) to destroy earth and in particular an unborn baby. Michael defies this and helps save the earth from the apocalypse with a bag full of guns and a little help from some humans (Dennis Quaid, former model Tyrese Gibson, Lucas Black). And yes, I know that doesn’t make any sense. The website Christianity Today calls LEGION “a confused mess of ideas” – a startling critique if you think about the hocus pocus in the bible. But, Christian film reviewers aren’t the only ones scratching their heads – the Los Angeles Times says it’s a “loud, dumb, time-waster” and The Daily Mirror calls it “preposterous”.

A review of LEGION wouldn’t be complete without mentioning what a complete rip off many of the action sequences are. Anyone that’s seen TERMINATOR 2 will be reaching for the nose pencils in one scene that’s stolen shot for shot. Compelling to think a movie with such a flawed central premise and rip-off action could do 17 million dollars on its opening weekend and will likely spawn numerous straight to video sequels.

Now here’s the twist. The strange thing about “Legion” is if you look past the horse manure premise and stop saying to yourself, “you’ve got to be kidding me”, it’s actually a fairly entertaining film. The dialogue is at times inventive, some of the performances halfway decent and I detected a few chills, some arm hair raising and even caught myself on the edge of the seat (and I’m pretty desensitized to this stuff). I left the theatre mildly transformed, expecting something devastating to happen outside the theatre – a sensation entirely unique to cinema and one of the reasons film makes such a great escape. “Legion” briefly altered my reality and even though it’s a good example of why God might actually despise humanity and want to kill us all, the film did what it was meant to do.