Armando Siahaan

The weakness of the angels in "Legion" is a turn-off for action movie buffs. (Photo courtesy of Screen Gems)

Apocalypse Movie 'Legion' is an Unholy Mess

God is sick and tired of human shenanigans, so he dispatches a host of angels to earth to exterminate his sinful creations. But the catastrophic plan meets resistance from a defecting angel, who leads a small group of men to fight the invading angels.

So how does a mortal being kill a divine creature? Just shoot it with a gun, of course. What else?

This may sound like a ridiculous take of the Bible’s apocalyptic Revelations, but it is the central premise of Scott Stewart’s flimsy action flick “Legion.”

The movie begins with the Archangel Michael (Paul Bettany) landing — somewhat amusingly — in Los Angeles, the City of Angels. Michael, in defiance of God’s plan to wipe out mankind, looks for Charlie (Adrianne Palicki), a pregnant woman who’s carrying a baby that might be the world’s only hope of salvation.

Charlie, who doesn’t know who the father of the baby is, lives in a trailer and works at a lonely diner in the desert owned by Rob (Dennis Quaid), the father of Jeep (Lucas Black), the only person who cares about Charlie’s well-being.

The diner, called Paradise Falls, receives an ill-mannered guest, an old woman who turns into a neck-biting, ceiling-walking creature, marking the beginning of the invasion of humans possessed by angels.

Fortunately, Michael arrives just in time to equip the diner’s staff with handguns, shotguns and assault rifles — and so the battle begins.

Although stories based on the Bible can definitely make for good movies, combining the premise with Hollywood’s Rambo is an invitation for disaster.

The movie has a bunch of too-obvious biblical references, which takes away from the film’s originality. For example, Michael likens God’s wrath as the sequel to Noah’s great flood, and the rain of flies the characters face is clearly taken from the 10 plagues visited upon Egypt in the book of Exodus.

Charlie’s mysterious pregnancy greatly resembles the story of a woman named Mary who carries a baby later named Jesus. But it is never explained whether the baby is actually another Christ, or just a child — a crucial yet confusing part of the plot.

But here’s the biblically twisted part of the movie. The angels are the villains. They possess human beings, turning them into zombie-like creatures with sharp teeth and big round eyes. The angels attack people like hungry tigers.

These warrior angels are sent to kill, but at the same time they can be easily dispatched with a bullet or two.

The angels’ weakness is a turn-off for action movie buffs who are expecting some sort of invincibility from the divine creatures — why can’t the omnipotent God send something a bit tougher? Or how about another great flood or devastating tsunami? Is God really that careless?

The movie is fiction, but if you’re going to base the film on the Bible at least do justice to the Good Book.

These angels, and Stewart, do however provide some laughable moments, including when the diner’s cook throws a frying pan at the possessed old woman and when an angel inhabits an ice cream man with a bright yellow uniform who drives a musical ice cream truck.

The movie categorically falls under the horror-action genre, so a great deal of action is expected. But the film has a dearth of thrill and intensity and is highly predictable.

The enemy can be killed too easily and there are only a few moments where the heroes are threatened by the violent angels. The protagonists who are actually killed are victims of their own stupidity, and the final battle between Michael and the Archangel Gabriel, the winged general, runs like a poorly choreographed martial arts exhibition.

The interactions between the human characters is a bad soap opera, with over-the-top dialogue like, “It’s my fault, I fell asleep. I let everybody down” and “I couldn’t pull the trigger.”

With recent protests by Islamic groups over movies they see as morally corrupt, it will be interesting to see whether any Christian groups denounce this film for its rather blasphemous content.

But the group with the most cause to protest are the people who actually buy a ticket to watch a BBB movie — biblical, bad and B-movie at best.

‘Legion’
Directed by Scott Stewart
Starring Paul Bettany, Lucas Black, Dennis Quaid, Adrianne Parlicki, Tyrese Gibson
100 minutes
Playing at Blitz Megaplex

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