Legion – Review

Whenever something truly horrible happens, like the Holocaust, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, Christians have always asked “where is God?” Despite that very sentence being a bit of betrayal to the whole blind faith aspect of religion, it is also a telling sign that man fears being alone. Or if you’re a Christian, the most disheartening thing is that God has forsaken us. It’s a just emotion to have, even Jesus Christ, when he was on the cross, yelled out “why have you forsaken me?” We use the word ‘ Goddamn it’, what if God really dealt the damning? Legion, in all of its B-movie glory, tackles this question, and with its religious mumbo-jumbo, answers it: He has lost faith in us.

“…you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:16-17)

Those with strict beliefs won’t find much of this funny, yet I even doubt if it would offend, but I applaud the director Scott Stewart for making an action/horror film with a fun, ‘what if?’ scenario. When you were young, deep down, when the Preacher is talking about this, that, or the other, your little imaginative brain, wasn’t thinking about what the meaning of faith, you were thinking about the the stories of the Battle in Heaven, where Lucifer was sent out, or the wild imagery in the Book of Revelations. That’s what Legion is. Director Scott Stewart has a lot of fun with images in the film, and in that B-movie sensibility sort of way, it’s a blast to see. Everything is well-staged; a villain like the sweet, yet secretly nasty old lady or Doug Jones’ ice cream driver character, gets some great introductions, as do the fights between Gabriel and Michael (Paul Bettany). If Stewart were to use this as a calling card, more action-oriented flicks were come his way.

“Why should I bow to man, I am made of pure fire and he is made of soil?” (Book of Enoch)

You have to be as old as the Old Testament not to have some fun with Legion, but the film has a bit of a convoluted idea-even though I liked it-it needed to be fleshed out more, and some of the CGI effects were okay at best. It’s not as concrete as an idea about an angel defying the orders of God, only to prove Him wrong, should be, but if taken at surface value, Legion is big, loud, goofy fun, and that’s something I’ll praise. Curiously, Legion comes out at an interesting time. With some drastic environmental changes happening, the troubles in the Middle East, the earthquake that rocked Haiti, and all of the 2012 prophecies, the End of Days is on everyone’s mind. Legion doesn’t add much to the discussion other than the continued expression of fear in our inevitable doom, but it was fun seeing God back in His Old Testament smiting stage.

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