Angry archangels

Opening with a banal voiceover monologue and a quotation from Psalms ("Come ye, ye children, listen to me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord"), Legion, writer/director Scott Stewart's apocalyptic thriller about an angelic genocide, is itself a pitched battle between the soporific effects of leaden dialogue and the cheap thrill of watching a stellar Paul Bettany try his hand as a supernaturally endowed action hero.

On balance, the clichéd dialogue and intermittent histrionics poison the well and ruin what begins as a promising exercise in mindless entertainment. The moments of riveting action are just too few and far between to amount to much.

The plot begins to take shape when the archangel Michael (Bettany) descends from above and severs his wings in order to break the, er, bond of heaven. He's in a state of rebellion, you see. But disobeying a direct order from God has consequences.

The Almighty has decided the human race is a failed experiment, and has ordered his winged minions to annihilate the species. Michael's assignment is to kill a young woman (Adrianne Palicki, of Friday Night Lights fame) whose unborn child inexplicably possesses the power to save humans from destruction. Rather than see this assassination through, however, Michael has opted to go AWOL and protect the woman and her child from the impending storm. Much carnage ensues, culminating in a visit from Michael's rival, the archangel Gabriel (Kevin Durand), and the two duke it out for the fate of the world.

He may not be much of a writer, but Stewart is an experienced effects man with credits from a long list of blockbuster projects. Not surprisingly, the supernatural angel/demons are convincingly ghastly, and the heaping dose of blood and guts is enough to turn the stomach (or at the very least, motivate you to avert your eyes).

The cast is peopled with talented character actors like Dennis Quaid, Kate Walsh and Charles S. Dutton. But the only performer who really shines is Bettany, whose visage is also attached to Stewart's next picture, Priest (slated for release in January 2011), a similarly bizarre thriller about a rogue priest hunting vampires.

The premise and storyline of Legion borrow liberally from a litany of dystopian classics. The film also bears some resemblance to other recent, lamentably portentous thrillers infused with pseudo-Christian themes (The Book of Eli and 2009's Knowing spring immediately to mind). Where it is mercifully divergent from many films made in a similar vein is that it doesn't take itself too seriously. Like 2005's Constantine (which also features the appearance of a pathologically wrathful Gabriel in the guise of Tilda Swinton), Legion is high camp, with catch phrases and gallows humor that transmit the message that the chaos is all in good fun. The human drama in both films is clearly intended to be genuinely affecting - successfully so in the former, not so much in the latter - but the religious references are so much kitsch.

Christian groups have reputedly described the film as blasphemous, a fault common to so many ostensibly Christian-themed films these days that the faithful must stay rather busy trumpeting their offenses. It's difficult to say who exactly would find Legion entirely satisfying, but perhaps that isn't the point. If you have a high tolerance for saccharine dialogue and a penchant for angry angels, this is the picture for you.

James Walling can be reached at
jwalling@praguepost.com