I LIKE MOVIES #17: LEGION

Legion is a collage of many other movies that came before it. There are elements of The Prophecy, The Terminator, Night Of The Living Dead, Maximum Overdrive, and any mumber of demonic possession movies. It's basically a B-movie with a budget, perfect for a rainy afternoon. What the movie lacks in well-thought-out, plot hole-free storytelling, it makes up for in popcorn action and an unobtrusive sense of selfawareness. It isn't trying to be an epic. It's trying to be a fun time at the movies.

The gist is this: God realized one morning that humans are wasting their existence with wars and crime and hatred. All those things that get attributed to "human nature." So he sends his angels to Earth on a mission of extermination. Particularly crucial to this task is the killing of an unborn child in a desert truck stop. If you want to kill roaches you've gotta kill the eggs too. This kid will grow up to save the human race. His name will be John Connor or Jesus: Part II. The Archangel Michael disagrees with God's plan and severs ties with his wings and the holy community in order to fight in defense of the human race. With badass machine guns and knives. Can Michael show God the error of his ways?

I think the makers of Legion grew up watching a lot of genre movies and kept many of their influences on their sleeves while making it. It feels sort of nostalgic for a time when horror and sci-fi could just have a premise and competent actors and keep you entertained for an hour and a half, no strings attached.

With that said, the movie isn't perfect by any means. The first half is a lot of fun. The last half kind of drags. There is a great deal of lost potential when there is an army of demons that don't do much of anything but get mowed down in droves by machine guns. The characters were defined just enough to know everyone's role in the apocolyptic situation at hand. Oddly enough the least defined characters are the two leads, the pregnant waitress and the kid from Sling Blade.

I would watch another one of these but if they want to make a part 2 they'll need to up the ante. I would like to see what was happening to the rest of the world during this angelic extermination. You know, big city batte scenes, stylized end of the world sort of stuff, more demons.

I know they aren't demons. They're angels. But whatever.

I'll give Legion today's arbitrary rating of 758 Terminator homages out of 1322.