Review: Legion
Archangel Michael (Paul Bettany) comes to Earth to save humanity and help the birth of the saviour of the human race take place. God has decided to throw in the towel – losing faith in humanity, he sends his army of angels down to Earth to destroy all humans and kill the saviour to avoid a resurrection of a wasted species. Michael is intent on letting that not happen and when finding the heavily pregnant mother (Adrianne Palicki) working as a waitress in a desert diner belonging to semi-permanent resident Bob (Dennis Quaid), he sets out to protect them. Arming them to the teeth with weaponry, they board up the diner and await the inevitable attack from the army of God.
This plot sounds acceptable on paper but when it comes to fruition it’s somewhat of a mess, getting confused and ragged as the direction it heads towards gets blurry. It’s a narrative that you can grasp but only if you forgive the large amount of flaws and holes in the plotline that plague it. The cast itself can do little to help the issue which is surprisingly considering that the cast is fairly strong. Paul Bettany is in good form as the passionate yet spaced angel who goes against his God for the sake of keeping faith.
Dennis Quaid plays his part well enough too as the protective father who takes charge in the face of danger. The likes of Tyrese Gibson as Charles Dutton, the cook with a hook for a hand and Kevin Durand as Gabriel, an angel who is determined to please his God by following any orders he is given, don’t hurt the film. There’s little any of them can do to help the film flow.
Bettany does what he can as a suit-wearing humanised angel but it's of little use in the end.
A lot of the time the actors seem lost – which is ironic considering a large portion of the film takes place in just a diner – and there doesn’t seem to be much coherency. The film judders along from one scene to the next with no real flow and if the finger should be pointed anywhere it should be at the director.
If Scott Stewart had focused on his talent for visual effects (his visual effects backlog include Sin City, Blade Runner, Jurassic Park, Pirates of the Caribbean, Grindhouse & Iron Man) then perhaps Legion would have benefited far more from him pulling the strings. The most impressive moments in Legion are when the visuals come into play, particularly with the possessed humans. Legion is only Stewart’s second directorial outing and this lack of directing experience does show.
There’s a lot of energy but not a lot of consistency. Stewart seems to try to compensate for the strained narrative by prioritising dialogue over everything else when the dialogue is the weakest point of the film. Legion plays out very much like you’d expect a horror film to play out (several scenes are reminiscent of Dawn of the Dead) and in general there’s not a high expectation of a compelling narrative where that genre is concerned – if it’s got possessed people attacking a group of different characters holed up in a small building with guns and lots of violence then it should work.
There are some great scenes with possessed angels in (one including a freaky elderly lady) but don't expect many of them.
Sometimes that formula doesn’t work but what’s weird about Legion is that if it tried to follow that formula it would wokr. However, it’s not trying to be a horror film. When it finds itself falling into the genre we welcome this with open arms yet the film seems determined to focus on preaching about religion and redeeming humanity when really we just want to see possessed people playing on human weaknesses.
Legion thrives when it plays the possessed card but those moments come sparingly. One moment involving a child is probably the height of the film but just as it gets interesting the story arc is drawn back down to character building about characters we don’t particularly care about.
The host of expected individuals you would want to see in a horror film are there (guy with a gun, rich snobby woman, rebellious teenage girl, pregnant woman, the nice guy who isn’t aggressive but needs to be, submissive husband, guy who has skeletons in his closet, traveller stuck in the situation by chance). Shame that Stewart doesn’t exploit this because Legion has all the makings for a brilliant horror film with action elements and yet it throws it away for the sake of story development.
Overall Impressions:
It’s disappointing that Legion turned out the way it did because it could have been much better. The action elements are the best parts of the film, but they are spaced few and far between and the heavy amount of religion-fueled dialogue that’s both stale and unconvincing is used too much to tell the story.
Overall, Legion is a confused film that’s split unevenly in favour of talking over fighting when it would have worked better as an all-out action flick. To quote Elvis: a little less conversation, a little more action.
Rating: 
The movie looked horrible. Not surprised by your final verdict at all.