Legion

Paul Bettany, Action Hero? Really?

No, you heard it right the first time. This is Bettany, the uglier other half to Jennifer Connelly, fresh from his turn as Charles Darwin in ‘Creation’, doing something that at would first seem unlikely, if not utterly ridiculous. The same Paul Bettany that wore white for ‘Wimbledon’ and played Russell Crowe’s imaginary friend in ‘A Beautiful Mind’. What next? Hugh Grant as John Rambo?

When God tires of humankind, for reasons best known to him/her/itself, he/she/it decides the best way to solve a problem like mankind is to just wipe the slate clean and start again. Given his/her/it’s almighty power of infinite possibilities, God decides to send a legion of Angels, in the unlikely and no less curious form of the possessed general public that look like they have accidentally stumbled out of a Dario Argento movie, to bring an end to humanity, rather than a click of the fingers, which would have been equally likely and far less fraught with the problems that Michael (Paul Bettany) has to face in the process of helping humanity save itself.

With the help of a ragtag handful of survivors, holed up in an out of the way diner, so begins the fight for mankind’s survival. With the aid of some convenient and necessary pauses in the onslaught of nonsensical violence, we are treated to snippets of a story from Michael that is almost as unlikely as half a dozen average Joes surviving an attack by a thousand unfit, lazy American couch potatoes that find themselves stuck in the desert without so much as a TV dinner to share between them.

The action is almost laughable enough to class as an actual comedy and probably would have gotten away with it, had it thrown in a few jokes and it would have then headed into Zombieland territory by being ironic and even a little bit witty and contemporary. But no, this is serious end-of-the-word apocalyptic-type stuff, or at least it tries to come off as such and fails actually, metaphorically and theologically too.

The first twenty minutes or so are intriguing enough, when you don’t really know what’s going on and even the cinematography is impressive, showing us Paradise Falls as anything but so and a cast of characters that do, for the most part, show some promise. After this, however, everything gets a little bit daft, more than a little contrived and just good old fashioned tiresome.

The brief compunction you initially had for the characters swiftly gives way to a script more concerned with being biblical in proportions and ends up taking away any decent development to character and plot. There are regular asides when the cast realise just what the bloody hell is going on and they are forced to face their own personal demons, but these are unlikely to impress anyone in the acting department, assuming of course that you haven’t already decided to make a cup of tea and read a good book.

This is an odd choice for Bettany, but having thought about, I would struggle to think of anyone who could pull off this role and not come out of it smelling like Satan’s armpit.

If you can imagine a cross between a much poorer version of ‘The Mist’ with a diner where the supermarket should be and a dumbed down version of ‘The Prohecy’ and you won’t go far wrong when trying to imagine the big mess that this is. Neither of the two mentioned movies were exactly classics, though either one knocks this effort into a cocked hat.

Oh, and Dennis Quaid is in it too. I thought I would mention it, though he probably won’t thank me for it.

Legion is released in the UK on 5th March 2010