LEGION - Film review - Originally written 9th March 2010

A bleeding and battered man falls out of the sky, in silhouette we see he has giant wings which he proceeds to cut from his body. He breaks into a store, steals clothes, sews up his wounds and then gathers an arsenal of guns before leaving. He is stopped by two policemen, he disarms one but the other starts convulsing, shaking until his eyes turn black and his teeth have turned into razor sharp “shark’s teeth” talks to the man as if he knows him, telling ‘Michael’ that he shouldn’t have disobeyed his orders. And so begins a battle for humanities survival.

Legion is a pure B movie that has a tremendous beginning and very entertaining ending but sadly has a pretty dull middle section. The initial opening and then change to the café in the middle of nowhere, where appropriately the battle for humanity is to take place with a ragtag bunch of stereotypes is really good. The craziness of the situation is really well played and it’s all quite exciting. However, sadly after this initial burst of excitement things stagnate for a while.

Characters talk and talk, and talk some more about their lives and their regrets etc which just slows the movie down way to much, plus everyone is taking themselves far too seriously. I’m not saying that the cast should have ‘camped’ it up at all but they shouldn’t be looking like they’re in Ben-Hur, they’re in a nice and trashy action picture. Have fun with it. If only Bruce Campbell had been in this he’d have shown them how to do it.

Had the director decided to go for a longer build up (layer on the tension and paranoia a bit more) and then when everything was in place cut loose with unrelenting action right up until the end he might’ve made this a far better movie. Possibly evoking Assault on Precinct 13 a bit more which in some ways this film does resemble.

As it is though we do get a very entertaining climax with a quite freaky moment with a child and then we get Michael battling an Angel, which is pretty awesome. If the ultimate ending is a bit on the weak side then it’s only because there was no other ending we could have had. But we get Paul Bettany showing off his action chops and truth be told, he doesn’t look half bad.

It’s not a great film by any means but it’s certainly fun and will truly find it’s home on DVD where I can see this building a cult fan base over the years.