Movie Review: Legion (2010)

Legion (2010): You might not think it at first, but a bit of apocalypse can be bloody entertaining. Stuff blowing up, people dying, chaos all over the place. It's usually good for something, at least in television and films. Probably not recommended outside of those mediums. I'm a long-time fan of the TV show Supernatural, which is focused around a lot of that crap. Demons and angels and all that nonsense, it's very good, so you would have expected me to look forward to Legion, which on paper is very similar to Supernatural. In execution, it really isn't. The majority of the film is set in a little diner way out in the middle of Who The Fuck Knows, America. It's all peaceful, until a nice old lady comes in, eats a raw steak, tells a pregnant lady her kid's gonna burn, calls everyone else a load of cunts and bites a guy's throat out before crawling on the ceiling like a spider and getting shot dead. That, understandably, shakes everyone up a bit. Turns out the big man upstairs isn't so happy with us nowadays. Remember the great flood, Noah and his big arse boat and that? Yeah boy. Course you do. SUPER successful bit of business. God's a smart guy, so guess what. SEQUEL. He's sending a load of angels to wipe us out. Except, for reasons nobody really explained properly, the pregnant girl's kid guarantees humanity's safety. If the kid dies, we die. Paul Bettany's an angel who's turned against pops and is trying to help, ripping his wings off and all that kerazy nonsense.

The film fails on several levels, but one fundamental thing that even some of the worse filmmakers have managed to satisfy: It's really, really fucking boring. Here you have a film based around THE END OF HUMANITY, and instead it's like one big action sequence followed by 20 minutes of tedious sitting around and shite forced dialogue with characters staring out into the dark waiting for the next big set piece. I'm not sure that Michael Bay can even tie his own shoelaces but in his films he just goes mental with the special effects and you're at least guaranteed a loud noise or bright light that will keep your eyes open for the majority of the film's running time. This has none of that. It's dull both in the content of the script and in an aesthetic sense. None of the characters are particularly easy to like, I think technically we're supposed to like The Pregnant One and The Boy One, but other stereotypes featured are The Dad One (played by Dennis Quaid, oh dear), The Teenage Rebel One, The Uptight Mum One, The Thin Black One and The Fat Black One. Some live, some die. No tears were shed. The only moments of entertainment come from the aforementioned evil granny and a later scene involving a similarly evil child. These are high comedy. I suspect those were intended to have a comedic edge. I suspect the filmmakers wanted there to be other plus points. Don't think they succeeded with that one. Two thumbs down.