"Legion" mini-review

Now look: I love B-movies as much as the next guy. Silly action flicks are fun! Combine some skill behind the camera with an interesting premise and you’ve got my attention. Daybreakers did this relatively successfully; The Book of Eli a little less so. But Legion? Legion is USDA Prime Fail.

Let’s see if I understand the thinking behind this movie:

Exec number one: OK, we’ve got a great idea: What if God was tired of mankind and decided to wipe us out, only instead of a flood this time he possessed the weak-willed and sent a badass angel to kill the one remaining child who could save humanity? And what if the only thing standing between that one badass angel was another badass angel who thinks humanity is worth saving?

Exec number two: Sweet! Why does the baby represent the salvation of mankind?

EN1: Who cares! Let’s never explain it!

EN2: Score! OK, so we’ve got this badass angel, the one who wants to protect humanity. Those wings will probably be a little expensive to animate the whole time. Soooooo…how about we have him cut off the wings and instead of using his badass angel powers, just have him carry around a ton of automatic weapons like a modern-day Commando. That work for you?

EN1: Hell yeah! Remember when we had the vampires and the werewolves just shoot the hell out of each other instead of acting like movie monsters?

EN2: Different studio, but yeah, that was awesome!

EN1: Damn right! Jager Bomb Time!

[Jager Bombs are distributed. High fives are administered.]

EN1: OK, now, the angel cuts his wings off and shoots the place up. Now what?

EN2: Well, blanks are expensive as hell. Let’s have five minutes of action surrounded by 25 minutes of talking. I mean, people probably care about why Random Black Guy has a gun, right? We need to characterize that shit.

EN1: Oh, yes, characterization is very important.

[Gales of laughter from our hapless executives]

EN1: Ho ho ho…Oh, seriously, though. Long stretches of talking. That’s what the people want, right?

EN2: Hell yeah! Action movies get twenty five percent better for every half hour there’s no action.

OK, enough of that. I’m not suited for the whole KSK thing. But hopefully you get the point: If there were any more ways to screw up a relatively interesting premise, I’m sure the Screen Gems folks would have found them. I mean, this is just atrocious. Like, Max Payne bad. As opposed to Hitman bad, which was actually pretty good: I mean, that movie gave us what we wanted, am I right? Violence — including, for no particular reason, samurai sword fights in a train station — and hot Russian chicks stretched around an interesting premise and a flimsy but just solid enough plot. I mean, it’s not high art or “good,” but it’s entertaining. As opposed to Max Payne, which had a couple of pretty great action sequences but tried to make us care about why the video game character felt sad. Nobody cares! Just shoot people! This isn’t high art, man, it’s a B movie. Give the audience what it wants. And by the audience I mean me.