Legion
February 3rd, 2010
Sound the trumpet!
Swift shot: Didn’t suck, was fun and I liked the overall premise. What I could have lived without is seeing an Angel do battle with a machine gun, but, it was a fresh approach on biblical combat. This is the kind of film you just sit back and enjoy, don’t rip it to shreds and you will have a good experience. If you want to shred it though, it would be easier than the Holy Divinity sending a legion of angels and his archangel, Gabriel (Kevin Durand) to smite an unborn infant – oh, wait, that isn’t so easy, apparently.
Enter Michael, and he isn’t John Travolta, smashing heads with a bull in some field, puffing feathers like some kind of lame twittering bird. This Michael, Paul Bettany, slams to the Earth and in a dramatic self-flagellation scene, literally rends his wings from his back . . . and stitches them up using a mirror. You get an immediate understanding that God is the bad-guy in this film, so if you have no flexibility in your faith, you might want to check out 10Things I Hate About Christianity, it helps put things in perspective.
I held a contest for free movie passes wherein I asked people to explain why humanity should be spared from God’s wrath, someone suggested www.cuteoverload.com and even Cheeseburgers as reasons for letting us live – I am sure the PETA people would beg to differ, but . . . I digest. (That’s from Family Guy you knuckleheads)
I really enjoy movies about theology, even bad ones can be mildly amusing if handled in a fresh way. And when you meet the sympathetic character in Legion, Charlie (Adrianne Palicki) doesn’t even have compassion for herself. Charlie is a pregnant woman who smokes – I mean, she might as well be Hitler! But, in order to show her transformation, she needs to start somewhere, and really the gutter is as good a place as any, right?
The other characters are quickly under siege by weak-minded people who allow themselves to be possessed by angels – critical aside, apparently everyone in the diner in Paradise Falls is immune somehow, or are they? There were a lot of poor dialog choices in Legion. The kind that make you want to to scream at the screen, come on, you can do so much better than that line, especially famous last words.
Still, this film had one gem I enjoyed tremendously. When Bob (Dennis Quaid) is asked why he keeps carrying around an old zippo lighter now that he doesn’t smoke anymore, he replies, “I’m sentimental, my ex-wife gave it to me, and I want to remember how much I hate her.” Nicely put! But moments that could have been downright scary came across as lame, no Lame (with a capital L) – when you see it you will know right away which sequence I am speaking of, I think it was a nod to Chucky, but it just sucked, truly abysmal.
Keep an open mind, have fun with it, don’t be so damned critical and you will enjoy it. Remember what it was like to just sit back and enjoy a film? That is what this film was like for me, I just sat back and casually enjoyed it. It had kind of a Demon Night meets Diner feel to it, but, if you take it for what it is, it ‘aint too shabby.
