Legion (2010, USA)

I’m beginning to wonder if Paul Bettany fired his agent some time ago in favor of taking career advice from his personal trainer. Because I’m having an honestly difficult time imagining anyone else who might have benefitted from Legion. Either that, or Bettany and director Scott Charles Stewart (both also involved in the upcoming Priest) have gotten religion in a really odd way – one that involves a lot of machine guns.

Frankly, a movie about machine-gun toting angels with killer abs (I’m pretty sure Bettany’s trainer designed the poster, too) wouldn’t be so entirely worthless if it weren’t saddled with an exceedingly dull middle section and some of the silliest dialog ever put to screen. (Writers, here’s a tip – if you need to use a lot of rousing speeches in your film, it’s best to be a bit more careful naming your characters. Because nothing deflates a stirring call to arms like punctuating it with, “understand what I’m saying, Jeep?”) However, the final twenty or so minutes nearly make up in dumbness what the first half does in dullness – we’ve got Kevin Durand as an S&M wing fetishist with an inexplicable accent, Lucas Black catching a baby as one would a football, Dennis Quaid and the lighter called “Hope”, T.V. actresses fighting the angel Gabriel off with a flare gun, and Bettany sacrificing pretty much every shred of dignity he won in his early career. Hope his trainer wasn’t waiting for points on the back end.