Legion (2010) - Honest Review

Read Time: 3 minutes

Year of release: 2010
Run time: 1 hr. 40 mins. | Rated: R | Genre: Horror / Action | Language: English

When a group of strangers at a dusty roadside diner come under attack by a legion demonic forces, their only chance for survival lies with an archangel named Michael, who informs a pregnant waitress that her unborn child is humanity’s last hope.

Synopsis

For the patrons and staff at a dusty roadside diner, the day begins as usual, but when the phones go out and a sweet old lady goes on the attack, it’s a harbinger of the terror to come. As the horrifying nature of the situation sinks in, help arrives in the form of the archangel Michael (Paul Bettany), who tells a pregnant waitress that her unborn baby is humanity’s last hope, and he will do anything to protect it.

Introduction

Legion had a very good concept wherein God sends angles to wipe out humanity. In my mind, it looked awesome, unfortunately what I saw was a very confusing movie and many questions were left unanswered. Directed by Scott Stewart, who does the following movie that will be released later that same year, which also features Paul Bettany as the star titles “Priest” its almost the same genre tackling the subject matter of religion. Hopefully it would be better than Legion.

At first, it gave a low-key Constantine feel. The scene where Michael (played by Paul Bettany) severs his wings, reminded me of Tilda Swinton‘s Gabriel getting her wings burned off. The tone was mostly the same, dark and edgy. Even though Constantine had also a lot of things going on, it far surpasses what Legion was going for. They added so much element to it but most of which had no explanation. It was annoying.

Even with the addition of known names such as Dennis Quaid and Paul Bettany, they couldn’t save Legion from its demise.

I was skeptical at first to see Bettany have a starring role, but him being in a Rambo role worked out well, not great though, but it was enough to not get criticized for it.
Dennis Quaid as Bob Hanson, starring as the crummy diner’s atheist owner, performed well and was able to bring up the movie’s standard up a notch.

The script was lousy, enough said.

Unanswered questions or plot holes?

Some questions were left unanswered throughout the movie:

Why was that particular baby so important?
If God sent down angels to possess humans, why didn’t He just sent some inside the diner itself.
Why did Bettany cut off his wings? Aside from not acknowledging his relationship with Heaven.
Why did the extinction stop just because the baby was born? Was he an instant Saint or something?

The main plot of Legion for me was that God got angry and wanted to end his creation, humanity, probably to give it a chance to restart. This is the order He gave to Michael and Gabriel, to eradicate humankind. Michael sees the goodness in humans, whereas Gabriel is the teacher’s pet, little goodie two-shoes that follows God’s instruction to the dot. In the end Michael proves his point to God with the baby being born (not sure how but He was pleased), Gabriel on the other hand got bitter and the rest is history.

This was all they had to expand on, instead they chose to include a lot of side characters with all their personal sob stories which we hear in a commercial-like manner, amidst the apocalypse.

Conclusion

Don’t get me wrong, Legion was an enjoyable Friday night flick in its own right, just don’t read too much into it or else you’d see yourself questioning everything. It was fun and had great potential, just ruined by a crappy script and poor execution.