Reviewed by Alicia Glass
Studio: Screen Gems
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Scott Charles Stewart
Review Rating: 6 Angel Wings
A diner in the middle of nowhere becomes the battleground for the final battle between humanity and a legion of angry Angels!
Right. I hate to say it, but not even Paul Bettany as former Angel Michael, or Kevin Durand as Archangel Gabriel, could save this movie. There’s so much action, plenty of fighting and faces contorting and humans being occupied by the Angelic Host to wreak havoc on unsuspecting humanity, but very little if not nothing in the way of explanation, backstory, or religious faith. Take the jump-off point – diner in the middle of nowhere, several stranded people, and Michael shows up to inform them all that God is pissed and is sending the Host to wipe them out. Why them specifically? Because one of the diners is a pregnant woman whose child happens to be humanitys’ last hope. At least, that’s what the crazed Grandma with sharp teeth who eats raw meat and climbs walls says.
The Angel wings are truly cool, yes, I admit it. But why, oh why, are they black? The armor to go with the fighting Angels looks nifty, but Roman, and somehow I kind of doubt that’s what they’d be wearing. And then there’s the tattoos. Michael as a human has these tattoos all over the place and, late in the movie when things have gone very bad and Charlie and Jeep and the newborn need to escape the oncoming Host, he…I have trouble believing it, even now. Michael takes ahold of Jeep, the tattoos climb up the survivors’ arms, and he gets some cryptic stuff about finding the prophets and learning to read the signs. Which is explained anew maybe three minutes before the movie ends, and we close with a monologue from Charlie about Gods anger at his children. I don’t get it. It’s not Prophecy level, which I saw, liked and own; it’s not even Prophecy 2 level, which again I saw and mostly liked although some parts where just plain laughable. Legion tries so very hard, but seems to take one single stab at everything – plot, continuation, fight scenes, and just plain old horror; and can’t measure up to more than a B rating in any of them.
I had such high hopes from the trailer! Not literally, I did not bother to go see Legion in the theater, but the trailer did look rather cool. Grandma-demon climbing the walls and all. Instead what we have is a mish mash where frankly even the climactic fight scene between Angels isn’t enough to make me cheer. Legion gets a droopy rating of Six Angel Wings, but that’s only because the movie was physically watchable.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-iNVH5U_nU]