God, tired of humanity, has decided to end it all. This time, instead of a flood, he’s sending angels to possess the weak-willed and make them into spiky-toothed zombies hellbent on killing the unborn child of Charlie (Adrianne Palicki). Standing between them and her are her lovesick friend, Jeep (Lucas Black), his Dad (Dennis Quaid), a bunch of people stuck at their truckstop diner, and the Archangel Michael (Paul Bettany), who has rebelled against God and decided to stand with mankind.



About twenty minutes into this fairly dire film I suddenly recalled an article I read years ago in The Age’s Good Weekend magazine. In it, a writer described his adventures as a struggling screenwriter when he thought he lucked out with getting a gig writing a script for a porn film. He wrote a witty, ironic script that parodied all the clichés of pornographic films and sat back to see his work of genius turned into the film that would legitimise “adult” entertainment as hip and clever. The rest of the article was him describing how his attempt at parody was, in the hands of the director and cast, turned into just another bad porn film. The coup de grace was, having spent a day watch people do various things to each other that are best left unmentioned, the director finally called out “Ok, let’s shoot the fast-forwards.” The poor writer then watched his entire script filmed in a matter of minutes with no interest whatsoever in the content.

I mention this for several reasons, mainly because I wanted to fast forward through most of the movie, but also because Legion clearly thinks itself to be a somewhat smart and hip take on religion and mankind. But despite the fact it’s made with the brio of a film-school student project (the opening features pointless showy camerawork, etc), there are small portions of it, namely the later action set-pieces, that are actually quite entertaining. The script takes itself very seriously, with actors competing to earnestly deliver tawdry lines about the nature of love, the worth of humanity and the struggles between parents and children to express love. But while it no doubt seemed very clever at the time, it’s just one cliché after another, and it bored me to tears. There are good actors trying to do good work here, but the joke is unfortunately on them, and the net effect is laughable. But skipping past the interminable dialogue scenes, there’s about 20% of the film that’s really quite cool. The director really knows how to stage an action scene, and towards the end there’s an awesome one with Michael facing off against a malevolent Archangel Gabriel. Angel wings are deadly weapons in this world and used to exciting effect by the director. Though honestly, if God were really that determined to end humanity, this film should never have lasted past the first minute. How a few people and a fallen angel with a bag full of guns can hold off the zombie armies of the Almighty is questionable at a minimum. Maybe, if God’s ibudget was as limited as the film’s?

I give Legion the limited recognition I have purely because the action is so satisfyingly well staged. I can’t in good conscience ignore how fun those bits were. But I really don’t recommend suffering through the rest of the film to get to them. No doubt all the best bits will find their way onto YouTube eventually, so I wouldn’t even bother with the rental DVD that this should have bypassed the cinema and gone straight to. One can only imagine that some film promoter is hoping to perform the equivalent of a smash-and-grab on an unsuspecting audience. That said, I look forward to Scott Stewart’s next film, hopefully with a lot more action and a lot less woefully awkward and pretentious padding