BEETLE REVIEWS LEGION

I promised you all a review of Legion several weeks back and now, I reluctantly present my thoughts.

Legion. Angels battling Angels during what can only be described as part apocalypse part extermination. There are loud explosions that light up the screen as machine-guns are fired into the air. How could this description be of a bad film?? well, it is...more or less.

Legion is about the war for the fate of mankind. Apparently God has tired of all our bullshit and has sent down an army of angels to wipe us out once and for all. However, one Angel named Michael seems confused by his orders and refuses to follow through on his mission to kill a pregnantg woman who the fate of mankind rests with. Now it is up to Michael to defend her from the army of Angels and the ultimate angelic warrior: Gabriel (Yes, THAT Gabriel).

Now I imagine that this description must sound vageuly familiar... If you can't figure out why I'll lend you a hand. Maybe you're familiar with a little popular franchise called The Terminator?? Well, that is what this film shamelessly rips off. The pregnant woman whose child is the savior of mankind...CHECK! The lone hero sent to defend her...CHECK! etc etc etc. Legion plays like a poorly written, unbalanced version of the terimantors except instead of robots there are Angels.

The film does have several scenes of really cool bad-ass-ed-ness, but it's never really enough to make up for the poor writing and story. Even the action scenes feel kind of wrong...maybe it's because Micaheal's main weapon of choice is a machine gun. Hmmm, I don't know about you but Angels with machine guns just seem wrong to me. Shouldn't they be using swords instead?? Anyways, The film does try to make up for its faults by inserting a biblical message, but even that feels wrong as well. Almost as if the film is trying to cash in on something by blowing people to bits and then throwing the bible in your face. Very hypocritical.

The actors also do a fairly poor job, even the regularly good Randy Quaid puts in a fairly horrible performance here. About the only actor that seems to be genuinely trying to act is Paul Bettany, The actor who plays the role of Michael. As hard as he trys it's really a fruitless effort because a film this bad really does not deserve to be saved.

While it is cool to see 2 high-ranking angels that are actually mentioned in the Bible duke it out for the last part of the film, unfortunately as a whole Legion falls flat. If you like action I guess I could reluctantly reccomend Legion to you...so long as you're able to overlook the script, the acting, and the hypocritical biblical message; and all that is pretty tough to do. Legion had an interesting concept that just couldn't sustain the weight of a GOOD film, unfortunately. Once again: Like The Terminator...only with Angels instead of Robots.

2/5 Stars