I spent my recent weekend with a marathon, from the land of tooth fairies to fighting a legion of angels for the sake of mankind. What an adventure, whew! but skip the tooth fairies land, because I’m going to write about my battle with angels (I thought angels supposed to be a saintly character by which derived the word angelic?). Even though the title is LEGION, don’t expect legions of angels rendered in expensive special effects.
The story follows as a bunch of characters who find themselves thrust together at remote truck stop diner and gas station called, ironically… Paradise Falls. Apparently, God, having lost faith in mankind, has ordered the end of the days – Armageddon, apocalypse, doomsday, whatever. So weak and meek people started getting possessed by angels by which apparently does not make the characters have clear skin and perfect teeth but instead they become almost zombie-like and start to kill all humans. The whole world falls prey to the possessed-by-angels meek and have inherited the earth (this happen off-screen, though).
What happen on-screen is focuses on Paradise Falls. Unaware of the chaos unfolding around the globe, the owner Bob Hanson, and partner, Percy goes about business as usual. The diner very pregnant waitress, Charlie, serves breakfast to Sandra and Howard, a well-heeled suburban couple and their teenage daughter, Audrey as they wait for their car to be repaired by Bob’s son, Jeep. Tyrese Gibson plays Kyle Williams a character with a troubled past, stop by at the diner to look for a phone.
The possessed start coming in as an old woman (Jeannette Miller in a very memorable scene) in a wheeled walker following by a lot more possessed humans, apparently trying to kill Charlie’s unborn child. Things look bleak, until the rogue archangel named Michael shows up without his angel-signature-wings driving a stolen police’s car and some awesome 21st century weapons. 9mm Handguns, assault rifles and wow! a rocket launcher for good measure. With Michael support they became humanity’s last line of defense. Michael gets everyone to hold up in the diner until the birth of Charlie’s baby which according to him should not exist, making it humanity’s last and greatest hope. Why? How? He didn’t explain because Archangel works in mysterious ways. Perhaps the child is the second coming of Christ? Or John Connor?
Ok, enough with the story line. Let’s see the loopholes, shall we?
First of all, God lost faith in mankind? Hey God, if you wiped out mankind, who’s going to live on earth? (Okay, maybe you’ll destroy earth too) Second, God wants to kill an unborn child. Okay... so what does he do? He literally sends a grandma, on wheeled walkers and a creepy ice-cream man to do the job. Seriously? An earthquake would be good. Tornado, hurricane, volcano, meteors, lightning, heart attack, bad fall… whatever. But God just send grandma with bad teeth to kill a baby under protection of a handsome and rogue archangel. And its just took a few slugs to stop the ice-cream man. Oh God...
The big problem I had with the movie is the fact that there are no billions of angles shooting at each other with sub-marine machine guns and hacking at their limbs with big knives or swords like the trailer and poster made of. There are only two of them. And there’s a moment before they start their hacking and shooting, Michael was trying to persuade Gabriel to stop the fight before it started. Okay, so the flashback send us to their moment in a place literally only God-knows-where (heaven, anyone?) when they were fighting side by side as brothers. But back to earth, the brotherly moment was a bit awkward. Or is it just me hoping that at some point the brothers will kiss each other and give us some thought about origin of err… Gay?
Actually, this movie is not that bad. A reminiscent of The Mist by Stephen King and also like the Evil Dead trilogy, just not as funny. But shades of Terminator 2: Judgment Day in the end, making it quite a confused movie, making me blinking with a thought ‘God was just testing His angels’ loyalty and feelings towards mankind or mercy to each other or whatever but seriously, wiping out mankind just for that?, God.. You got better reputation down here on earth and don’t make your attractive-looking angels kicking each others’ ass... please.’
By God here, you know which version of God I’m referring to. So, peace!
