God’s finally tired of all our bullshit and is dispatching a fleet of angels to take out the failed experiment that is human-kind. However, one renegade angel by the name of Michael disobeys his orders as he falls to Earth, cuts off his wings and arms himself to the teeth while planning to save humanity’s only hope which is the unborn child of a waitress.

Kinda sounds like “The Terminator”, right? Yeah, I thought so too.

“Legion” is a totally serviceable B-flick. If you approach it with that mindset, you’ll enjoy it for exactly what it is. It’s biggest sin, though, is that it is not trying to bring anything new to the table. If you’ve seen “The Terminator”, “Demon Knight” or “From Dusk Till Dawn”, you’ve essentially seen this flick too. It’s sole spin on the story is that it makes God the ultimate badguy.

Right from the start we’re given the stock characters for the “holed-up-together-in-the-middle-of-nowhere” movie scenario. There’s the grisled shop owner, the true believer, the reluctant hero, the yuppie couple, the rebellious teenager, the stranger from out of town and of course the [not so] virginal heroine who is completely oblivious to how important the life is that’s growing inside of her. The bare essential amount of development and backstory are done in order to set up who everyone is and what their motivations are before this lady shows up and literally all hell breaks loose.

Yes, that’s Gladys Foster and you probably recognize her sweet little face from the tv spots where she tears someone throat out and then spider walks up a wall. Gladys Foster is an example of what “Legion” does right [and no, I’m not talking about it’s goofy CGI]. Right before Gladys transforms into a spidermonkey hellbeast, she spends a decent amount of time chewing on a raw piece of fly-covered steak, telling everyone in the restaurant how all the little babies are gonna burn. When the yuppie lady tries to interject she calls her a “fucking cunt” among other things. The point I’m making is that where as many studio’s would’ve taken this little B-flick and toned it down to make it a PG-13 scarer for the kids, “Legion” totally embraces itself as a hard R with all of it’s language and violence. And I certainly appreciate that sort of thing.

Gladys Foster, however, represents what’s wrong with “Legion” as well. See, one big question I had when leaving the theater was this: If God wants to wipe out humanity by using his all-powerful angels with razor sharp wings and balls of steel, why the hell does he have them possess feeble human-beings? When it comes to shuffling off the mortal coil, we’re basically playing by Romero Zombie rules – one good shotgun blast to the head and the games over. I guess the easy answer is that without stacking the humans against a human force, there is no movie. As you’ll see in the third act, if God had sent even a dozen Gabriels to wipe out the world, the flick may have been over in the first half hour.

Where it counts though, “Legion” is definitely fun enough to sustain itself. The action is good and even with the feeling that you’ve sort of seen this all before, it’s still an entertaining piece of cinema. If you’re in the market for a decent action/thriller that doesn’t take itself too seriously, you’ll dig it. Just don’t go in expecting a big Man vs. God epic – because if you do then this flick has FOOLED YA!

* * * out of * * * * *

-d0m portalla [2010]