Legion

Waste of time.

If you think you have to see it, wait for DVD. Or see if you can stream it from somebody’s digital camera they snuck into the theater.

No, wait, I take that back. Make sure to pay for it. I like Paul Bettany. And you can just feel it in the air how much he is trying to be viewed as an action star. I think he deserves it too. He’s got the acting chops, and he looks danged good on film holding M-60's and whipping a bazooka around.  Obviously he got tired of being cast in the “actor’s” role and wants to do something superhero-ish. So I think you should support him. Maybe just pay for a ticket and then go see something else you wanted to see but were ashamed to admit – like To Save a Life or that Squekuel Alvin movie.

So Paul Bettany plays the archangel Michael who descends from heaven on December 23^rd, and because he too, decides to sell me out on coming to Ashley’s surprise party, he goes to his weapons cashe hidden in some regular building on the side of a busy LA street.

That’s right, the archangel Michael needs a lot of guns. Okay, well maybe it’s because he cut his wings off, not sure why, it did help him lose his halo I guess. Which was an electronic collar – what? That’s right, electronic collar, because God needs to keep electronic collar’s on his angels. Now, I’m okay with trying the imagery of the halo being a collar, but it actually drops off his neck and makes a mechanical whine sound before the light fades out. I guess it’s powered by the Holy Ghost battery power. 4 Double A’s.

He stands off with another angel who possesses a police officer and tries to stop Michael from going forward with his plan. This after Mike blows a hole in the side of the building he held all of his weapons in. And here’s how hokey it is, the blown hole is actually in the shape of a cross. I mean, that’s trying really hard to infuse it with religious imagery. What does that even mean? What was the thought process there? "Oh, this Michael character is from the Bible, so let's have him blow a cross shaped hole in the wall! YEAH!" Because crosses are in the Bible too. That's clever.

I can’t figure out why the angels possessed the humans and the would rush in and bite their targets. Usually demons posses people in order to operate in the fleshly world. I guess most of the angels didn't get the memo that Michael and Gabriel got - angels can fly around AND get shot by guns. It was clearly more effective when Gabriel flew in using his bullet proof wings (they actually make metal ricochet sounds when the bullets hit). Or why didn’t they just come in as themselves – Michael did it pretty well too. But why did Michael fight Gabriel with guns anyway? And why did he take off his wings, he lost like 5 hours driving a stolen cop car from LA when he could have flown.

Then Gabriel fights with this really awesome mace. It’s looks like the very weapon you’d expect an S&M suited archangel to carry. He puts it against Michael's face… and then pushes a button on the side and the handle. The mace starts to rotate!… Yes Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor, apparently they do have power tools in Heaven.

See, it all gets so stupid you can’t just go with it. The real problem is that it takes itself SO incredible seriously. I mean, some of my favorite films of all time are 3000 Miles to Graceland, Mortal Kombat, Highlander, etc. I know what a B movie is - I know how to suspend my disbelief. This fails to help me in anyway. It is concerned with getting from one image to the next, and with letting Paul Bettany carry around large guns. And that is it.

Proof of this idea is after the grandma demon (popular from the previews) is shot and killed. The teenager is freaking out in her corner booth when blood starts dripping on her face. She looks up into a ceiling vent and more blood is coming out of the vent and dripping on her face. And that's the last we ever visit that image. No one mentions there’s blood dripping from inside the ceiling, no one goes to check if someone is caught in the air ducts. The teenager even fails to alert the manager of the store that his air ducts might need cleaning … DUE TO BLOOD COMING OUT OF THE CEILING TILES!!!

What you would think would be covered in blood and action, actually leaves the gunfire quite sparse. There are moments of hightened action sequences and then suddenly it all stops. It’s strange. All the characters keep breaking up in twos and asking eachother about their home life. This has to account for at least two thirds of the film. It’s actually kind of interesting and it is well acted, but it left me squirming and bored because I was there to see action. I thought the action was going to get better. It didn’t. And at the end of the film I looked back thinking I should have tried more to enjoy the two person acting scenes.

Sadly, you've seen every action sequence from the previews. What you thought were tiny snippets were actually the entire reveal. It ruins any chance of surprise and you quickly realize it was just there to get you to pay for the ticket and to take up a couple more minutes in the script. The grandma demon, the icecream man demon, and the lots of demons including the little kid that talks like a woman on steriods (which his voice was probably the scariest thing in the whole the movie) are all just about as long as you see them in the trailer.

What was really good about this movie? The casting. It is the only thing it has going for it. I decided not to look up anything about this movie in an attempt to guess where the director came from based on what I saw. It had to have been a music video director. This is at best a B-movie. But then it takes itself so seriously you can’t help but hate it. But that’s like a music video where the singer is over acting her singing movements. All the visuals you can think of are slapped across the screen, and you do your best to fill every face in the frame with a star or someone beautiful. But you can stand it because it's three minutes and a good song. Luckily for this group of actors, they were all really well cast together and with parts that fit so well.

It's evident that the image is the only thing being paid attention to in the film.

I also think we inadvertantly created a new action star. As much as I like Paul, he will need to try again (and unfortunately he is scheduled to try again with the same director - I looked him up - he came from the special effects department - I knew it was all about what it looked like) The actor who plays Gabriel is magnificent - Kevin Durand. It may very well be only his onscreen presence, but it is phenomenal. He's powerful even when soft spoken, his voice has the hypnotic resonance to it, he holds a power tool mace really well when framed in the doorway against a bright light, and I absolutely bought his dilemma, his pain, and even his hurt in the moment he finds that he was wrong. He should be playing the next Conan the Barbarian.

The sound design was also superb. The mix is haunting and creepy in all its use of sound and I swear something was done to Gabriel’s voice that made me want to be on his side like I was in a trance.

But let me tell you, this film is a SHAMEFUL repackaging of Terminator. Trade a timetravelor and machine for two angels, and make Sarah Conner have the new hope for mankind during the final chase sequence. We even get an extremely similar monologue voice over that caps the beginning and end of the movie.

"Oh, and instead of being a chase through the city, let’s just stick it in one location. And since we can’t figure out how to keep the archangels at bay for two days, we’ll have angels possess humans. That way all our main characters get to shoot somebody." Suddenly it’s a zombie movie. Seriously, think Terminator but Sarah holds up in a restaurant, the Terminator just walks around outside, and then zombies show up to give her and her gang something to shoot.

It was ridiculous. And I don’t mean in the Rambo III / Missing in Action III kind of way. I mean because it was trying so hard it completely ruined any chance it had at being a laugh-with-me-and-watch-some-cool-action type of flick.

Lesson Learned: Make time for your screenplay. Even great actors can't overcome being in a music video. Oh, and make things make sense, unless you know they don't and you're winking at the audience. Don't be too clever for your own movie.