The Gown – student newspaper at Queen's University Belfast.

REVIEW: Legion

Basically, this is a film of machine wielding angels.  Well known for his work on the visual effects teams of films like ‘Harry Potter’, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, ‘Red Cliff’ and ‘Blade Runner’, Scott Stewart offers up his latest hack-saw go at writing, and directing.

BY LAURA SHEARER

Under the tagline ‘when the last angel falls, the fight for mankind begins’, this messy narrative captures the topical post-apocalypse format, but with the added rouse of religion at its core.  God has forsaken mankind and it’s up to the fallen Archangel Michael (Paul Bettany) to rebel, save the unborn messiah and validate his remaining faith in the human race.  In a rundown dinner in the middle of a desert, no-man’s-land lies the only hope that mankind has, featuring a cast of  relatively C-list actors, it’s clear from the start that this action-fantasy-thriller won’t quite make any comparison to the films it references.

The terribly confusing narrative is rooted in ideas of anarchy and agnosticism.  It greatly misses the opportunity to explain itself. God has already sent us an unborn messiah, but for some unknown reason, this time he’s decided to abort mission save humanity.  At what point have we reached a stage that history couldn’t possibly repeat itself in spiritual terms?  Surely the selfless Michael who cuts off his own wings in a very detailed scene, is a reminder to the apparent creator that humanity isn’t too far removed from his own image?  The plot doesn’t even explore these ideas, leaving viewers stumped as to why it’s the main grounding for the narrative.  Lots of cheesy one-liners conclude that the dialogue has the main purpose of attempting to show what exactly is going on, but it’s very basic structure is constantly interrupted by huge explosions and ample gore.

In a lot of the scenes it’s obvious that it wants to expand into the familiar zombie horror B-flick, of such straight to DVD fame, but this is just another one of its allusions that it doesn’t follow up.  The complex pastiche of other films, e.g. Omen reference with the small child scene, just shows the makers up as there is so little in the narrative that it really needs to continuously reference.  The spot-the-reference game does pass a lot of the time in the cinema, but that’s more of a play along at home style of entertainment.  The sometimes diabolical editing features some really unnecessary jump cuts that clearly are due to the issue of keeping a restraint on the film length rather than adding style.   Never mind the astonishing finale scene on the cliff with its unbelievable rushed attempt to add in some interesting cinematography, that’s just something today’s cinema viewers begin to dread.  Honestly, it ends on a swear word and that would suffice as a quick description of this film, but you’ll have to go see it to find out what that is.

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