Puzzling, cliché ‘Legion’ a letdown (1.5/5)

Legion

Starring: Paul Bettany, Lucas Black, Adrianne Palicki
Directed by: Scott Stewart
Rating: R for strong, bloody violence and language.
Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

“Legion” is one of the biggest disappointments this year — and that’s saying a lot.

From undeveloped characters to a predictable plot and plain bad scriptwriting, “Legion” fast became its own worst enemy.

This Scott Stewart film just couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. A horror? A drama? A thought-provoking look into human nature? A mess?

Well, it got that last one right.

I’m all for fresh writers in the caught-on-repeat Hollywood scene, but maybe Stewart’s and fellow co-writer Peter Schink’s untested writing abilities are partly to blame.

Idealistically, fresh writers bring fresh ideas. But too often, they end up falling back on awful movie clichés.

The moment any movie character threatens “the child,” I know there’s no recovery. Unfortunately for “Legion,” that’s pretty much how it opens.

Predictably, it’s all downhill from there.

It’s got an interesting premise. God is fed up with humanity, and so he sends his angels to eliminate the lying, greedy, selfish homo sapiens.

But Archangel Michael (Paul Bettany, who by himself is one of the few reasons to watch this movie) believes that God has it all wrong and that he just needs a little persuasion to see how awesome people really are. In the meantime, he must protect an unborn child from certain death at the hands of the angels.

A rundown, isolated desert diner — aptly named “Paradise Falls” — is the unlikely location for the standoff between Michael and God’s right-hand angel, Gabriel (Kevin Durand, who was incredible as the baddie in “Lost” but just lacks any depth here).

The diner is owned by Bob Hanson (Dennis Quaid, who must have been hard up for work) and his son, Jeep Hanson (a flat-as-a-pancake Lucas Black). Yes, his name is Jeep. That ought to tell you something about this film right there.

Jeep is smitten with the very pregnant and adoption-minded Charlie (Adrianne Palicki), who is staying with the father and son duo and helping out at the diner.

After Michael comes and informs Charlie that her unborn child will somehow save the world, the diner is put into lockdown (helped along with the atmospheric loss of power). The group faces several unearthly “creatures” that come to kill them, including a matronly grandmother figure who spider-crawls up the walls and the local ice cream truck driver whose jaw is bigger than John Kerry’s.

Other than the Hansons, Charlie and Michael, there are a handful of other diner fighters. But, frankly, they’re hardly worth mentioning. Except to note that there is really no reason for Audrey to exist much less to dress in the most revealing clothes that side of the Mississippi.

“Legion” is full of unanswered questions that are more the result of writers block or shoddy planning than the mayhaps hoped-for intention of intellectual design.

For one, if God wanted everyone dead, why did he have to use subterfuge to accomplish it? How do guns kill angels? And what happens to the angels when they “die?” And why couldn’t the angels enter the diner? And what happened to everyone outside the diner? And why do the angels act more like hellbound demons than messengers from God? And why did I watch this movie again?

“Legion” fails at everything it tries to accomplish. It’s not scary (and I am quite possibly the easiest person in the world to scare), it’s not insightful and it’s not interesting. Jeep, presumably the main character, has absolutely no development, an IQ of perhaps 20, and is quite frankly very obnoxious.

The ending worries me a little. Stewart and co. clearly left “Legion” open for a sequel. I’ll consider recommending Stewart to sainthood if he doesn’t try to push through a “Legion II.”

1.5 of 5 stars