Legion

There will be a point in Legion when you suddenly realise that the film before you is utter rubbish. Depending on your tolerance for high budget nonsense will determine how long into the film you are when this moment arrives as, for some, it will be during the first quarter of an hour whereas others may not realise it until the closing moments. In order to swallow this utter tripe, you need to buy into the idea that God has grown tired of humans, has lost faith in them and so has dispatched his angels down to earth to wipe us all out. Are you with me so far? Good.

The film begins in an undetermined year so it could be now or in five years time but, whenever it is, it takes place around Christmas time when the Archangel Michael, one of the few senior officials 'up there', returns to Earth where he hacks off his wings, sews the gaping wounds closed and, after despatching two police officers, heads off into the Mojave desert to meet the occupants of the Paradise Falls diner.

This is no ordinary diner with a dodgy TV that won't properly play It's a Wonderful Life and serves up rather unappetising looking food. Oh, and the waitress, Charlie, is eight months pregnant and the Archangel Michael has spotted her from heaven as the proof that not all humans are bad and that the baby she is about to give birth to will be the key in this battle between humans and the forces of heaven.

There isn't a great deal of exposition in Legion as, for the most part, it is comprised entirely of scenes with the occupants of the diner shooting at vehicles and people that come, possessed by angels, to try and kill Charlie and her unborn child. Most viewers will recognise that this major plot point as being ripped off from James Cameron's Terminator universe and wonder why the filmmakers haven't been sued for copyright infringement but, if you stick with it, you might enjoy a possessed old woman biting a chunk out of a man's neck before leaping onto the ceiling and crawling around whilst people shoot at her.


Once the Archangel Michael arrives, fully tooled up with a vast array of weaponry, he kind of explains what's going on before distributing the firearms and telling the people in the diner not to go outside and to kill anyone who tries to enter the premises. From there on in, the film alternates between people talking and extremely loud gunfire (with some extremely loud death metal music as an accompaniment).

I'm not quite sure why such a gifted actor is Paul Bettany agreed to do this when he must have known from the scripts that it would stick out as one of the turkeys in his filmography alongside the likes of The Da Vinci Code. As anyone who follows films will know, Denis Quaid seems up for just about everything -- how else would you explain such rubbish as Jaws 3-D, The Day after Tomorrow or G.i. Joe: The Rise of Cobra? The rest of the cast is comprised of people or you may recognise from bit parts in other below average movies or even not at all.


This marks Scott Charles Stewart's feature film directorial debut, having previously earned his crust in the visual effects departments of numerous films from Mars Attacks! to Night at the Museum and Iron Man, working for ILM and The Orphanage, those companies responsible for making effects laden films look as good as they can be. Certainly, this has all the hallmarks of being directed by someone who is more concerned with spectacle than substance and his co-writer, Peter Schink, had never previously written a screenplay for a feature film either, having previously been employed as an editor.

Legion is utter tosh but I was half expecting a good thrill ride in which Paul Bettany, replete with huge animatronic wings and their muscled torso went around shooting a gun. At least that's what the poster and Blu-ray front cover led me to believe. The reality is that the scene depicted on the front of the box never happens, the only time Bettany has his shirt off is when he needs to attend to the wounds on his shoulder blades and it never seen with wings until the very end of the movie. This is a film that really doesn't want you to take it at all seriously as anything that introduces the Archangel Gabriel as a furious warmonger with razor tipped bullet proof wings and a huge mediaeval mace which, at the flick of a button, produces even more spiky bits and then even spins for the ultimate in Angelic destruction.


Furthermore, the overview on the rear cover bears little resemblance to the film as it mentions a "bloody siege of the demonic legion" and "the ultimate fight between good and evil". Considering there are only humans and angels, I'm not sure what the "demonic legion" is and how this can be a battle between "good and evil"?

Sometimes you get brainless films that can be good fun, but Legion isn't even fun or enjoyable in a 'put your brain on standby' way, it's just tedious, knuckle headed and stupid.

The Disc

Extra Features
The first question that you will have to answer is whether to watch the film with movieIQ on or not as this will provide a variety of interesting titbits about the shoot, the soundtrack and members of the cast and crew but will take up about half the screen and several minutes of loading time.

Under the Special Features is a picture-in-picture option called Bringing Angels to Earth which is another option to put on whilst you're watching the film as various little screens will pop up explaining how things were done, locations, casting and things like that. It is basically a commentary track with Scott Charles Stewart book with various information and interviews appearing through the PiP window. This is a pretty good way to do a commentary and I wish the more discs would take advantage of the capabilities of the Blu-ray format.

Creating the Apocalypse (HD, 23:43) is a fairly detailed making of with contributions from most members of the principal cast and crew, especially the visual effects gurus from Optic Nerve, who go into great detail about the special effects. If you're not that interested in how the stunts and special effects were done, give this a miss.


Humanity's Last Defense (HD, 11:32) gives the actors a chance to say great things about their colleagues and why it was just about impossible to turned out the film just as the crew say nice things about the actors so it's one big love in, really.

From Pixels to Picture (HD, 10:57) explores all of the visual effects and goes into great detail about all of the green screen and other CGI elements to the film. The film looked as if they were a great deal of visual effects and things involving computers and visual manipulation and this shows how much is down to those wizards and their computers and how the effects were accomplished.

Deciding Paradise Falls (HD, 16:37) shows how the diner was created, why they decided to shoot in New Mexico and how the cinematography creates a sense of unease before the big scares and action sequences take over.

Designed for Action: Blueprint of a Scene (HD, 10:21) is, as the title suggests, a detailed analysis of one of the key night time scenes going from storyboards and other sketches in no way through to the CG enhancement and other visual effects additions.

Finally, there are trailers for the other Sony Pictures Home Entertainment releases: Armored, District 9, Zombieland, 2012, The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day and the Blu-ray Disc™ is High Definition show reel.


The Picture
For the most part, Legion looks excellent although the contrast levels aren't quite as deep as I was expecting and there are some dark scenes where the clarity and level of detail drops dramatically. However, the visual effects and SFX make-up are all extremely good and the monster effects are good, plus the CGI wings have a real weight to them.

Just as the film alternates between dialogue scenes and action, the demands made on the visuals switch between fairly tight shots of people talking and expansive vistas with hundreds of vehicles approaching the diner or myriad angels flying overhead. Both of these look good, are well worth it and make you glad of the 1080p picture.


The Sound
The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is one of the loudest I have heard and the scenes in which the characters pull the trigger and shoot at their otherworldly invaders really wake your speaker system up with bullets flying around the room, machine guns firing from all over the place and, if that weren't enough to upset your neighbours, there is a deafening heavy metal soundtrack to fill in the tiny gaps in the soundstage that the automatic gunfire and yelling somehow missed. Perhaps the most surprising thing about Legion is that these action sequences are so extremely uninvolving and are, to quote Shakespeare, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

When you don't feel as if you're in the middle of a war zone, the dialogue in the more intimate scenes is presented extremely well and comes across clearly say you have absolutely no problem understanding what's going on, not that you care!

As is becoming increasingly usual for a Sony Pictures Home Entertainment release, the disc caters for the visually impaired and hard of hearing with a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio descriptive track and, amongst the various other languages, an English HoH subtitle track.


Final Thoughts
Although this is not the worst film I've seen this year by quite some distance, it is a very long way from being up there with the more mediocre releases that I have sat through this year. It is extremely clunky and really doesn't seem to have the confidence to go with a proper theological thriller so, whilst the action ramps up, the coherency falls away. Legion isn't dreadful but is extremely disheartening as you realise that just about any old nonsense will be released as long as it is big and loud enough to keep people quiet and eating popcorn for 100 minutes.

The package is fairly good with very good AV quality and reasonably interesting set of extra features.