Sunday, May 9, 2010

Legion - movie review

Yesterday I went to the movie theater to watch "Legion" with my girlfriend. She's an ex-goth, and I always liked Biblical themes and playing with them, so we thought that this Apocalyptic-themed movie would be a nice way to spend evening. Although, I checked few ratings on the Internet and asked a friend who already watched it, and both were not promising, so I was prepared to possibility that movie would suck. After watching it, I'm not totally disappointed, but nor I'm in any way impressed.

Story in short: the Apocalypse is here and only hope to stop it is that archangel Michael succeeds in saving the unborn child of an unwilling soon-to-be-mother Charlie. In that he will have help of a small group of people isolated in a restaurant in Mojave desert. I'm not sure who the main character is: Michael, a rebellious angel (play by Paul Bettany); Jeep, a young naive friend in love with Charlie (at least I understand him like that); or Bob, Jeep's father, owner of restaurant and a loser (played by Dennis Quaid).

When I asked him about it, my friend told me "It would be much better if it lasted longer". I was a bit confused at first, but now I completely agree. Movie last some 100 minutes and in that time fails to focus on what it wants to be. It has many action scenes, but as an action movie totally sucks. Guns with unlimited reserves of bullets and massive car explosion are not convincing; and rare special effects are unimpressive. Pointy teeth and walking on ceiling are not scary anymore, so it fails as a horror, and bloody scenes were just gruesome to watch. And most importantly, movie fails to exploit its apocalyptic connection. It doesn't explain why it really started and how is it proceeding in the rest of the world. And two angels and possessed people are only supernatural phenomena in the movie. Child is supposedly a "only hope of humanity", but never it is explained how or why. If it lasted another 60 minutes where these things were elaborated more, I think this would be a much more series movie.

There were a few good points to movie. I really liked how every character had his own story and background; they were not just a new person to get dead. Nor were they behaving unbelievable stupid. I'm not a right person to judge acting, but I didn't find it too bad. But, as I said, I'm not really a visual type.

All in all, it was not really a waste of time. Main problem of the movie was unspecified genre: is it a horror, action or fantasy? I have watched better movies but in the end, it was not a bad way to spend an evening.

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