Legion (2010): Embrace the Awfulness |

I would like for someone to answer me one question: How in the world did Legion manage to snatch up so many known actors? Paul Bettany, Dennis Quaid, Charles S. Dutton, Tyrese Gibson, and Kate Walsh? Plus others you know whether you realize it or not, like Doug Jones (Fantastic Four‘s Silver Surfer, Hellboy‘s Abe Sapien). I know these are not super duper high profile actors but they are higher profile than I would have expected in a film like Legion. In fact, the cast is the only reason why I went to see this film. Perhaps all the actors got together and said, “Hey this movie is crap! I dare you to do it!” “Yeah, well, I’ll do it if you do it!” “FINE! I guess we’re all gonna do the movie, then!”

Legion is about God becoming bitter and tired of his children, a.k.a. the human race, doing bad things to each other and having no faith. He decides to destroy us all, but he runs into one little snag. There’s a waitress, Charlie (Adrianne Palicki), who is pregnant with a child who will save the human race. So God sends his angel, Michael (Paul Bettany), to kill the child but Michael decides to protect the child during the apocalypse instead. And so the fight to survive begins!

Before I go on, you must know that I love Paul Bettany, so my view of the movie may be skewed just a little. I mean, he could be running around in a hot dog suit using mustard guns to save a tomato from being made into ketchup and I would still think it’s awesome…wait that’s not fair, that scenario is awesome! Anyway, you get my point, and Paul Bettany, you need to call me! For business reasons of course ;).

Having established that fact, I enjoyed Legion. I was amused the whole time, well most of the time. There were a few dull talking scenes, but for the most part it was very entertaining. I know some say it doesn’t make sense or the story has been ripped from several other movies, but so what? Avatar’s plot was a lot like several other films, and some people think Avatar was the best freakin’ movie ever. Now don’t get me wrong, Legion was a terrible movie with so many things wrong with it that Michael Jackson’s plastic surgeon couldn’t put it back together again. You have to embrace all of the awfulness and just have fun with it.

You know, usually in an action flick, the action serves as a vehicle for the hero to look awesome; however, I think that Michael a.k.a. Bettany, made the action look pretty awesome in Legion. The action was… surprisingly normal. It was regular old shooting people and trying to survive, when I was expecting more evil grammas and creepy long-legged ice cream men (Confused? Watch the trailer). Legion definitely had too much talking, but then again, I think that pretty much every movie has too much talking and not enough face punching. For a B-movie, they could’ve gone a little bit more over the top with the action, you know. At least then it would have been an awesomely-bad movie. But as it is, the action is entertaining and enjoyable, but did not wow me. I went in expecting ridiculousness and was a little let down by the normalcy of it all.

This is a hard one for me to recommend because even though I enjoyed it, I know people who hated it. I went in knowing it was going to be dumb. I ignored the nonsensical, derivative plot and cliché dialogue and embraced all of it, laughing the whole way through. If you can’t do that, then definitely skip Legion. But if you can ignore the stupidity and just let yourself laugh at it, then Legion will be bad in a fun and good way.

Time until real action starts: ~ 5 minutes

Baddies: God!

Best Line: “Your f***ing baby’s gonna burn!” GRAMMA! Such language!

Spoiler Alert! Best Kill: Amidst the diner guests is a not-so-sweet married couple Howard (Jon Tenney) and Sandra Anderson (Kate Walsh). Howard gets a good chunk of his throat ripped out by the evil Gramma, but that doesn’t kill him. He survives a little longer just to get dragged out into the swarm of possessed people attacking the diner. So you think he’s gone right, but nope! He makes one more triumphant return. He is tied to a cross upside down outside the diner. Sandra runs out to save him but she doesn’t see that his skin is bubbling disgustingly. He promptly explodes and some type of acid sprays all over the place. Sandra was supposed to have died in her husbands boiling guts, but Percy (Charles S. Dutton) had to go and ruin everything by being a hero. Did I mention this Best Kill is a two-fer? Howard’s death also kills Percy. You see, Percy ran after Sandra to bring her back into the diner, and he shields her from the Howard-splosion so that all the goop hits Percy in the back. He drags Sandra back to the diner and then falls over. His back has been eaten away by the acid goop so that all you see is blood, spine and rib cage. Percy, Percy, Percy. Should’ve ditched that chick and left her to her fate instead of being a dumb ol’ hero. Then we would’ve been able to see your cheerful face in act three of the film instead of seeing you stuffed in a body bag.

Spoiler Alert! Best Explosion: The Quaid-Man is dying, so he turns on the gas stove and Gabriel (Kevin Durand), a baddie angel, notices that something isn’t right. Gabriel looks at Quaid who says, “Sorry, we’re out of business.” The he ignites his lighter. Kaboom! The whole place explodes! That’s right, sucker! You just took a ride on the Quaid-train! WHOO-WHOO! All aboard! Dennis Quaid’s the conductor and what he says goes!

Action Rating: 2 ½ Evil Gramma’s, out of 5