You know it’s the end of the world when Grandma starts crawling the walls.
You might also assume that a post-apocalyptic movie featuring the same supernaturally-possessed Grandma, a spiderlike ice-cream vendor, an army of swearing, black-eyed angels, and a chain-smoking waitress who happens to be eight months pregnant with the only hope for humanity might add up to be a half-decent popcorn flick. You would be wrong.
“Legion” is the premiere release by writer and director Scott Stewart who has working on the visual-effects side of filmmaking for most of his career with “Iron Man” and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series. The cast features an eclectic mix of unknowns and stars including Lucas Black (“The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” and “Jarhead”), Tyrese Gibson (“Four Boys” and the “Transformers” series), and Paul Bettany who you might faintly recall as the albino-skinned masochistic monk from “The DaVinci Code.” Also starring Adrianne Palicki who’s dabbled in everything from Robot Chicken cartoon shorts to Friday Night Lights and the Golden Globe-nominated Dennis Quaid, who needs no introduction.
“Legion” takes a new twist to an old story, specifically, the story cited in the Bible known as the Book of Revelations that prophesizes the day when God will judge humanity. As Michael relates, God has lost faith in humanity and has ordered his army of angels to descend upon the earth to exterminate all mortal human beings. The archangel Michael (Bettany) drops wingless from the heavens into the streets of Los Angeles who, in spite of God’s orders, has gone rogue to save mankind.
Meanwhile, cut off from the rest of the world, it’s business as usual at the decrepit, aptly-named diner, Paradise Falls, in the desolate Mojave Desert. Everyone at Paradise Falls is stuck there either by circumstance or compulsion and no one is happy about it.
Hard-edged proprietor Bob (Quaid) and his adult son Jeep (Black), share a meaningless existence together running the diner and the mechanical repair shop out back. Jeep is naively in love with Charlie (Adrianne Palicki), a chain-smoking waitress eight months pregnant by a nameless father who uses her less than ideal circumstances to be a self-pitying martyr. Chance patrons at the diner include road-weary traveler Kyle (Gibson), short order cook Percy (Charles S. Dutton) and a rich, but emotionally-detached middle-aged couple, Howard (Jon Tenney) and Sandra (Kate Walsh), and their bratty teenage daughter Audrey (Willa Howard).
This disparate group must somehow muster the strength and teamwork to protect themselves from the onslaught of angel warriors and possessed human vessels about to attack the diner.
“Legion” has the crude humorous twist of “Dogma” with the predictable action you might expect in “Night of the Living Dead.” The plot is predictable, the biblical references are off-base, and throughout the movie, each character receives a complimentary though unnecessary ten minutes of dialogue and sentimental pathos. While the special effects amplify the thrilling action scenes, most of these scenes are downright ridiculous: an elderly Grandma-figure devours a raw steak with carnivorous, ravenous fever, most of the possessed humans acquire eerie abilities to crawl like insects, and to top it off, the archangel Gabriel wields a chainsaw.
“Legion,” with its butchered biblical references, Western shoot-outs, kung-fu archangel combat sequences, and cartoonish gore makes this movie, stylistically, a confusing mess. This movie will have you wishing for the end.
Follow Alexandra Churchill at twitter.com/aleechurchill.
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