Legion (2010)

Tagline: When the last angel falls, the fight for mankind begins.

Curiosity: Baby girl picked this one out. She told me she only wanted to see it for Paul Bettany’s abs, even though the movie poster to the right is thoroughly manipulated.

Plot: God is done with people’s bullshit, so he sends all the cherubim and seraphim to kill them. The archangel Michael (Bettany) think that’s a dick move, so he pulls a Kyle Reese and helps this preggers lady (Adrianne Palicki) save her baby so he can grow up to redeem mankind. But the angels have the same powers as the agents in The Matrix and fuck shit up! They attack the good guys with an ice cream man and an old lady!

Sadly, the two best characters (Charles S. Dutton, Alien³, and, weirdly enough, freaking Tyrese Gibson) don’t survive. But man does waitress lady smoke a shit ton of cigarettes in an effort to make her unborn child’s life difficult.

Thoughts: Well, now I know what the first two Prophecy movies would look like if they thoroughly cribbed plot points from the first two Terminator movies. Legion is too self-serious and unimaginative to function well as B-movie fare, and it mangles Christianity enough to be sacrilegious. Blasphemy hasn’t been this boring since the last Marilyn Manson record.

But I don’t necessarily care that the movie gets the Bible wrong. I’m more frustrated by simplistic filmmaking. Director/co-writer Scott Stewart often nickels and dimes his scenes to save time and money, resulting in action sequences that lack punch and dialogue exchanges that don’t feel fully fleshed out. Several times, my friends and I felt like there was a line or two missing, as if the characters were responding to dialogue that only they could hear. Same could be said for the story – Stewart often skips a couple plot points to advance the story without actually advancing it.

That scene with the possessed grandma was cool though. And Tyrese and Dutton are both so awesome. I wish this movie was about two black guys who kick the shit out angels, instead of the story of white trash screaming all the time. Michael Jai White, please correct this mistake.

Reflection: After a while, we just started quoting The Terminator furiously, and it was better than the real dialogue. Poop on this movie.