I figure, if God is going to exterminate us all, he might use a more established technique. Massive floods. Plague carrying bugs. Joan of Arcadia marathons. But no, the G-O-D is all about the newness. He's about what's fresh. And what's fresh this year is mass extinction by way of angelic death bringers. At least that's the premise we were led to believe. Paul Bettany drops on earth like Michael Biehn in Terminator. The similarities between this and that film are unmistakable. Bettany is Michael, a former angel in God's army. He's come to earth with a mission. To save the future of humanity from God's wrath. Our future rests in the hands, or rather the pregnant belly of a waittress(Adrienne Palicki) living in a small New Mexico border town.
The truck stop diner she works at is populated by a who's who of B-Grade role callers. Dennis Quaid is the grizzled owner; Tyrese "Mayhem" Gibson is the thug with a heart of gold(I know! So unlike him!); Kate Walsh is hanging around as a snob; Charles "Roc" Dutton is a one-armed vet who gets made fun of a little bit but cooks a mean steak. Then there's Lucas Black, from Friday Night Lights
and Tokyo Drift 
fame. He plays Quaid's son, the hilariously named Jeep. I don't know if he's named after the vehicle he was conceived in, but you haven't lived until you've heard an angel telling a guy named Jeep that he's the savior of humanity, and trying to maintain a straight face while doing it. I actually like Lucas Black as an actor, even if one could set up camp in that long southern drawl of his. It works for whatever reason.Michael's arrival at the diner is met with the typical disbelief inherent in those who've just been attacked by a fanged, spider-walking granny. You'd think they'd be open to any amount of supernatural nonsense at that point, but no. Apparently, God didn't see fit to just send out a legion of winged badasses to wipe a handful of meatbags off the map. Nope, let's just posess a bunch of humans and parade them zombie style around the joint, where they can be picked off one-by-one by any idiot with a pistol. Not the Man's most well thought out idea. If this plan were one of God's creatures, it'd be the platypus.
The idea behind Legion is actually a pretty sound one. When in production, I was staunchly behind this, thinking we might get to see a pretty cool war between angels and stuff of that nature. You can have fun with a story like that, and for awhile I thought that was the road this was headed on. The first half of the film bounces along pretty casually, with some cheesy dialogue and humorous one-liners thrown in. Then I don't know what happened but it starts taking itself way too seriously. Sure, the fate of all humanity is at stake, but...you don't have to act like all humanity's at stake! Have some fun with it. I laughed more at Extraordinary Measures, and that was about dying kids.
I would kill to see what a more capable writer could do with Legion's story. This isn't really a holy war. It's Assault on Precinct 13 with some lousy vaguely religious sounding mumjo jumbo thrown in. I think the point they were trying to make is that God wants us all to keep fighting even when all hope is lost. That seems to be what they kept telling me...or should I say, hitting me over the head with until my brain bled. Actually, that sounds like a more fitting demise than sitting through this again.
4/10
