The Exorcist: Extended Director’s Cut (1973)

The Exorcist: Extended Director’s Cut Review
Review # 141

5/5 stars

Director – William Friedkin

Cast – Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair, Jason Millers, Max von Sydow, Lee J. Cobb, William O’Malley

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– followed by Excorcist II: The Heretic

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I am not a horror movie fan in general, and don’t expect to become one any time soon.  I have a sneaking suspicion this is the result of all the torture porn out there, which isn’t true horror, in my opinion anyway. I just don’t like horror movies that rely on gore and/or jump moments for their effect. The horror movies I do like tend to inspire not so much horror per se, but a slow and rising feeling of dread. Movies where the tension just builds up and builds up, not to be released in a “jump” moment, but in an inevitable series of events, the climax that the movie has been building too.

The Exorcist is a movie like that. It hasn’t aged well in some ways, as in todays desensitized culture the shock elements are perhaps not as shocking as they once were. But The Exorcist is still unnerving, chilling, and even moving. This is good, as those are the more important elements of the movie anyway. The story is really at the forefront here, and that’s how you make a good horror movie, or any movie for that matter, regardless of genre.

We follow actress Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn), whose young daughter Regan (Linda Blair) is starting to behave oddly. After countless doctors fail to come to a diagnosis, and as Regan is acting worse and worse, she feels she has no choice but to turn to a priest for an exorcism. She finds Father Karras (Jason Miller), a priest who privately feels himself to be losing his faith in God. He manages to convince the church that an exorcism is required, at which point Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) is brought in to lead it.

This movie of course has stirred up quite a bit of controversy in its time, mainly of course for the disturbing and hideous transformation of  sweet 12-year-old Regan into a possessed blasphemer and, well… cross fetishist, but the scenes detailing her experiences with the medical community are almost as bad. Perhaps it is because this torture seems to come from a more real and concrete world. It is to the movie’s credit that by the end of the movie we fully believe that the demons and exorcism are just as real. The director apparently had a lot of experience with making documentaries. Perhaps the sense of  realism that is palpable throughout the movie stems from that. Strange though it may seem, the most important thing in horror movie is that sense of realism. Without it, no strange and gruesome events would ever be really scary.

OVERALL

The Exorcist is a drama with scary bits, and works beautifully that way. It puts story above scares. While the shock factor may not work quite as well to a modern viewer, it makes up for it with an engaging story and excellent acting. Highly recommended (to those who can stomach this kinda thing).

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138 – Camelot (1967)

Camelot Review

4/5 stars

Director – Joshua Logan

Cast – Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave, Franco Nero

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When I found that Richard Harris was the star of the filmed version of the Broadway smash hit Camelot, I half expected a Paint Your Wagon experience. But in this extravagant re-telling of the Arthurian legend, Harris more than fills the required black leather boots as King Arthur, as do Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero as Guinevere and Lancelot respectively.

While expecting a somewhat dry and bland movie, Camelot surprised me with its wit and, dare I say it, depth. While focusing on the forbidden romance between Guinevere and Lancelot, the movie is really about the effects of their affair, both on King Arthur (who knows about it), and on the fragile union of England embodied by the famous Round Table.

Camelot starts off at what is chronologically almost the final scene. King Arthur finds himself facing an upcoming battle, and ponders the events leading to the tragedy of war. The movie then unfolds in flash back, starting with Harris’ joyously perfect rendition of “I Wonder What the King is Doing Tonight”, where he tells of his nervousness at his upcoming (arranged) marriage to a woman he has never met. Of course this woman turns out to be Guinevere, who has similar reservations. They meet-cute in a forest, away from their attendants, and fall in love. Their perfect bliss is soon marred, however, by the appearance of perfect knight Lancelot…

I like the maturity on display here, they’re all so level headed. While Lancelot and Guinevere are having an affair, they are aware of the consequences and even frown upon their actions; but as they say, they can not choose whom they love. On top of all this, King Arthur is aware of the affair, but decides to do nothing, so as to preserve the fragile English peace. No one flies off the rails here. The inevitable war is not a reaction of Arthur to his friend and wifes betrayal, but comes from scheming lords and knights, led by Arthur’s treacherous bastard son, Mordred. I enjoyed the way the movie shows a noble man try to do his best to rule a kingdom, despite forces beyond his control trying to upset his rule. There really is a lot of nobility in this movie, and not just from the royal blood on display.

Granted, the strengths of the movie definitely come from the musical on which it is based, as the songs are funny or affecting in the right amounts. Unfortunately the direction is not extremely assured, and the movie is definitely not helped by its somewhat sluggish pace. We could maybe have used a bit more spice, and you could say the ending is a bit abrupt, but it still packs a nice little punch if given a chance. All in all the grandiosity, seriousness, and wit of Camelot adds up to a very satisfying experience… if you can sit through the 3 hour running time.

OVERALL

Camelot is a big movie, with heaping portions of everything you could ask of a medieval musical. Sure it is a bit slow and unwieldy, but there is a depth of heart here. It is not all flash and Broadway sparkle. This is good old Hollywood entertainment, and I am glad I saw it. In the end, what more could you ask for?

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137 – Source Code (2011)

Source Code Review

2.5/5 stars

Director – Duncan Jones

Cast – Jake Gyllenhaal, Vera Fermiga, Michelle Monaghan, Jeffrey Wright, Michael Arden, Russel Peters

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Source Code  is the second film from Moon director (and son of David Bowie), Duncan Jones. The idea at the core of the movie is that Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) must repeatedly relive the eight minutes prior to a train bombing in order to deduce the culprit.

It’s a great idea, but I never felt it living up to its premise, and while it may be a bit unfair to judge a movie on the heights it fails to hit, we can’t help but think of how much better the movie could have been.

The movie is really a murder mystery at heart. The victims are the train passengers, the train is the island or snowbound inn of countless armchair mysteries, and the murderer must be one of the people on the train. Colter of course, is our Poroit. Agatha Christie would be proud. But what is the main rule of a murder mystery? It seems to me that is that you solve the crime at the end of the story. Source Code solves the crime far too soon, not too long after the half way point, and then moves on to a far less involving plot. This just plain doesn’t work.

Now, Stevens must try to stop the bomb exploding in the first place, despite the fact that he is repeatedly told that the mechanism which allows him to relive these events is essentially just a simulation that has no effect on real life. He insists on trying anyway, and with the illicit help of Vera Farmiga’s military character, he goes back in to save the life of all the passengers of the train. Especially the life of the hot brunette who sat across the aisle, who he apparently he has fallen in love with. The brunette with whom he has no past, no relationship, and has exchanged maybe 50 words with. Structured this way, the movie comes across as two episodes of a TV show just glued together. And the second half is nowhere near as good as the first.

Which brings us to the ending… an absolute cop-out of an ending that leaves us wanting more (in a bad way). Worse than just being a cop-out, it seems to break the rules already established previously. It just casually smashes them, and treats it like a plot twist. But a plot twist must come out of the rules already established. To go back to the murder mystery reference again, we must have been able to, if we are smart enough, figure out the ending with all the information provided; but here we had already been told (well, essentially) that the ending we get was impossible. It just felt like cheating to me.

Well, enough of the bad stuff. It cannot be argued that the actors here are all excellent, with Gyllenhaal demonstrating great leading man chops, and Farmiga once again showing us what an under valued actress she is. The true standout though is Jeffrey Wright. To those who have only really seen him in the Bond series (including me, unfortunately), his great performance as somewhat of a mad scientist will come as a shock, he really is wonderful.

OVERALL

Source Code is frustratingly uneven; frustrating because the first half is really good. The central idea is so strong, and filled with such promise, that it strikes me as strange that the plot line should be solved just after the half way point, to be followed by a series of much weaker events. Slack characterization and development mean we don’t care about the ensuing romantic side plot, leaving the ending lackluster and anti-climactic. The first half is great though, so that leaves the movie with a half score, 2.5 out of 5.

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134 – The Train Robbers (1973)

The Train Robbers

2/5 stars

Director – Burt Kennedy

Cast – John Wayne, Ann-Margaret, Rod Taylor, Ben Johnson, Ricardo Montalban

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I didn’t realize how late in life John Wayne kept making westerns; apparently he kept right on going right up to a couple of years before his death. I guess the John Wayne western movie was such an American institution he couldn’t stop making them any more than Old Faithful could stop gushing.

In The Train Robbers, a tired and derivative movie, he plays a gritty and authoritative man who recruits some old friends to hunt down stolen gold, which belongs to a woman whose husband was shot keeping the hiding place secret. These old and tired men stroll through a few miles of the American West to find the case of gold, “pursued” by a band of 20 men who aim to steal it from Wayne and Co. once it is discovered. This results in a gunfight or two (actually, I think literally just two), by which time we find the indomitable American hero at a train station, where he dynamites three buildings to take care of 4 or 5 straggling baddies.

It is a strange thing, but this final sequence is probably the best in the whole movie, and the final scene (in which a nice little twist is revealed) is actually wonderful. It’s a pity that the rest of the movie is so bland, boring, and just plain dull. I haven’t seen a movie this empty of vim and vigour in ages. It is as if the aging John Wayne (he was 66 at the time of filming) sapped the whole production of all energy. Quite frankly, the role (and even this type of movie) was quite unsuited to John Wayne by this point in his life. Did he continue with the same type of roles because that was all he knew? Probably.

What makes it worse is that there is nothing blatantly wrong with the story as is. It could have been fairly interesting; perhaps with some more focus on the tension between Wayne and his friends, or with more focus on Ricardo Montalban’s mysterious character, who follows both groups through the western sands. The movie just doesn’t have an iota of dramatic energy, and we merely end up with a bland feeling of vague disinterest. If only some chances were taken here, any chances at all to make it more interesting or give it a sense of urgency. Some better editing would have gone a long way. How do you have the legendary Duke in a gunfight over $50,000 in gold against 4 to 1 odds and have it be boring?

OVERALL

The Train Robbers has a decent movie buried inside it, but is smothered by an aging star who is unfit for the role, and by a total lack of urgency and suspense. Perhaps I am biased, as I’m not known for loving westerns, but I couldn’t get into this movie in the least. Maybe someone accustomed to the genre would have better luck. Maybe.

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133 – Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)

Gentleman’s Agreement

4/5 stars

Director – Elia Kazan

Cast – Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire, Anna Revere, June Havoc, John Garfield, Albert Dekker, Celeste Holm, Jane Wyatt, Dean Stockwell

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Gentleman’s Agreement is a very well structured and performed film which follows journalist Phillip Green (played by Gregory Peck, also in Twelve O’Clock High), who decides that to write a truly great article on the problem of anti-Semitism he must immerse himself in the phobias and outright prejudice faced by Jews. Having moved to New York to do the piece, he informs everyone he meets that he is Jewish, and catalogues the results.

“Catalogues the results” may seem a simple way of saying it, but the character really believes it is that simple. Little by little he realizes the full extent of the bigotry experienced by Jews. He finds that his newly assigned secretary had to change her name on her job application just to be considered for the position; his friend would not be able to stay at his fiance’s unoccupied flat because there is a “gentleman’s agreement” not to let the rooms out to Jews; his son is chased from the playground, and called a “dirty kike”; and Green himself can not stay at an inn on his honeymoon… it is a “restricted” inn. Not officially, of course, but when he confronts the owner he is all but flat-out told so.

I must admit when told the premise of this movie I expected much more virulent hatred to be shown to Green because of his supposed Jewish faith. The movie doesn’t give us bricks being thrown through his window, or show us white sheeted crowds burning crosses; and it is a good thing too. The movie’s point is that racism generally shows itself not through violence, but through apathy. This point is aptly made in a scene toward the end of the movie where Green’s fiance describes a party she had just attended where a man told a disgusting Jewish joke. She tell’s Green’s friend, played by John Garfield (both the actor and the character being Jewish), how angry she was; how she just wanted to throw the man’s words back in his face, to just get up and leave. “What did you do, though?” Garfield asks. “Well, nothing, but I felt horrible,” comes the reply. Garfield quietly explains to her that this is the problem with racism… everyone feels bad about it, yet they do nothing.

The movie is very keen to say this, and it does so well, and many times. As seen today, it says its message perhaps a bit too neatly, too on-the-head. Put bluntly, it is about as subtle as a hammer to the head sometimes. There is one speech in particular which exemplifies this. Green’s sick mother has read his finished article and then says the following speech. Imagine it with a slow zoom, with the mother gradually almost turning to face the camera. The only thing it is missing is a flag slowly waving behind her…

“You know something, Phil? I suddenly want to live to be very old. Very. I want to be around to see what happens. The world is stirring in very strange ways. Maybe this is the century for it. Maybe that’s why it’s so troubled. Other centuries had their driving forces. What will ours have been when men look back? Maybe it won’t be the American century after all… or the Russian century or the atomic century. Wouldn’t it be wonderful… if it turned out to be everybody’s century… when people all over the world – free people – found a way to live together? I’d like to be around to see some of that… even the beginning. I may stick around for quite a while.” 

Perhaps I am a bit too harsh; indeed, this is a major problem with “issue movies”, that you can never look at the film the same way after the passage of time. What seemed brutal and revealing at the time may come as naive and even childishly simple now. Such can be the case with Gentleman’s Agreement, but if seen through the lens of the time period we see that it come from an innocent and genuine place. In fact, despite all this there is a true sense of optimism and genuine truth about this movie that is honestly inspiring. It is through these eyes that the movie should be seen today, and of course, it’s message is truly timeless.

OVERALL

Gentleman’s Agreement is a powerful, if slightly dated movie that brings to light both the prejudices shown to minorities, and most people ignorance to it. It is very well acted, with all-American boy Gregory Peck perfectly cast as the smart but naive lead character. It is a great example of society at the time, and still has truths that can speak to all of us. Definitely recommended.

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132 – Centurion (2010)

Centurion REVIEW

3/5 stars

Director – Neil Marshall

Cast – Michael Fassbender, Dominic West, Olga Kurylenko, Riz Ahmed, Noel Clarke, Imogen Poots, Liam Cunningham, JJ Feild, David Morrissey

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Gory, brutal, and bleak, you could say that Neil Marshall’s Centurion is a low-budget Gladiator. It’s nowhere as good as that excellent (no matter what Roger Ebert says) Ridley Scott movie but, frustratingly, it could have been, with a better script. A looser shooting style would have helped as well I think.

The story follows Fassbender as Quintus Dias, a Roman soldier whose group (the legendary lost Ninth Legion) is wiped out in Scotland by the Picts. Well, they asked for  it, being part of an invading force after all. Strangely, the movie doesn’t really go into that issue, but just focuses on Quintus and a couple comrades as they try to fight their way to the nearest Roman outpost.

Tracking them is a group of Picts led by Etain, played by Olga Kurylenko (perhaps best known as a “Bond girl” from Quantum of Solace). Etain is a warrior out for revenge, after being raped and forced to watch her family being killed, as a young child. She is a mute, and this seems to have enhanced her other abilities, as her skills stop only just short of a ninja. She is one lethal, ass-kicking babe.

Quintus is not sketched out very well, character-wise, and frankly no one in this movie is. This really affects the movie in a bad way, and is the most obvious problem here. The only reason we are given to care for these folks is to hope that we don’t have to see their heads split open by an axe, or their eyes speared through with arrows. Fassbender is fairly charismatic, to be sure, but I would have loved to have seen more. Some subtle delving into these characters pasts perhaps, (other than sitting around a fire and asking “Where are you from” a couple of times), before the next fight/chase scene. The unsure and clumsy climax doesn’t help much either, though where we end up is interesting.

Not to bash the action sequences, which are generally quite good. Neil Marshall does know how to ratchet up tension, and some sequences are quite tense. One scene in particular had me really paying attention, a scene toward the beginning where Quintus’ fellow soldiers are all massacred. The editing is quick and rhythmic; we are shown quick successions of shots where one impact (usually a killing blow) is delivered. We hear and see one death after another, THWACK, TWACK, SLICE, THWAK. It was unnerving, and very effective.

Centurion has a strange contradiction in style. It has a gritty and brutal production design, with harsh landscapes and tense set pieces; yet the camera work is restrained, even sedentary, with a colour design that can be beautiful, yes, but with an almost shiny sheen, that works to counteract the production design.I would have loved to see this movie shot in the style of films like Children of Men. Less shine, more grime. Less restrained camera work, more “documentary style”. I think that would have helped immerse us in the movie a bit more. Add a stronger script and we’re all set.

OVERALL

Centurion never realizes the potential of its premise, as the script reads like a plot summary, rather than a finished project. The action sequences are entertaining though, and Fassbender makes for a good leading man. Some interesting things happen, but could have been done better. With all things considered Centurion is a missed opportunity, but yet is not quite an awful experience. Recommended only if you are into medieval action flicks. Or Fassbender’s abs… there’s a LOT of those on display!

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130 – Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011)

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol REVIEW

4.5/5 stars

Director – Brad Bird

Cast – Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Paula Patton, Jeremy Renner, Tom Wilkinson, Michael Nyqvist, Vladimir Mashkov, Anil Kapoor, Josh Holloway, Ving Rhames

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– follows Mission Impssible 3

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Ethan Hunt is back, in the fourth movie in the Mission Impossible series. The IMF organization has been framed in a bombing of the Kremlin, and Hunt and team (Pegg, Patton, and Renner) must track down the real culprit to clear their names. It sounds a bit generic, but this is my personal favourite of the franchise.

In fact, this movie is essentially everything you could ask of an action movie. It is fun, exhilarating, and even smart. Who would have thought it, eh? My favourite thing is that most of the set pieces are not just exercises in action, but smarts. You can see the characters thinking “What can I do here?” My favourite moment is a tension-ratcheting one where Pegg and Cruise use a screen and a video camera to make a hallway appear deserted. It was a quiet but gut-tightening sequence. And funny, to boot.

The Mission Impossible series is a bit of an oddity when it comes to franchises. First off is the irregularity of  their releases. The first one was released in 1996, and it has taken 15 years for us to get to the fourth. But mainly there is the difference in style of the films. The first film was definitely a thriller, directed by Brian De Palma. It was sleek, featuring mainly European locations, and its most interesting scene was not one of i’s shootouts, but a neat and quiet moment where Tom Cruise realizes he has been double crossed. MI 2 ramps up to the bombastic, and its stunts come to a near ridiculous level. It was, of course, directed by John Woo. Despite its craziness, it still had a touch of intrigue, and I did enjoy it, though I think it is the worst of the series. Then came the third, (and best to date) movie, directed by JJ Abrams. This one managed to both shrink and expand the Mission Impossible world. We saw much more of the IMF organization and the set pieces were wonderfully executed, but had many more quiet moments between the adventure.  Up to this point, each movie had a distinct style.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol does not try to stake out its own ground, however, instead following the template of the third movie. This was a great decision. It does perhaps lighten up the tone a bit, and is not as dark in places, but it does not feel as near as distinct as the others. In fact, you might almost regard MI 3 and Ghost Protocol as a new series. Tom is a bit older, and the movies are frankly, better.

Another great thing about the series is it’s inconsistent use of actors for the head IMF men. We’ve seen Jon Voight, Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Fishburne, and now Tom Wilkinson as Hunt’s superiors. This means they can use them in interesting ways, without having to worry about continuity, past or future. They can turn traitor, die, etc.

If I had a problem with this movie it would be with the general uselessness of Renner’s character. He doesn’t do anything particularly noteworthy until the end, and even that doesn’t blow us away. But this is a point I thought of after the movie, so it mustn’t have been that bad. There is a neat continuity tie at the end for those who have seen MI 3 as well, and that was nice to see. Though surely we coul have seen more of Ving Rhames?

OVERALL

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is a fast-moving and witty adventure, with exciting set pieces and adrenaline to spare. In an age of repeating sequels and remakes, this is one series that I would love to see continue as long as Mr. Cruise wants to keep doing them. Whatever your opinion of Tom Cruise, you have to admit that he is excellent at what he does.

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128 – Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows REVIEW

4/5 stars

Director – Guy Ritchie

Cast – Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Jared Harris, Noomi Rapace, Stephen Fry, Rachel McAdams, Eddie Marsan

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follows Sherlock Holmes

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Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) makes his return in the lavishly un-traditional “updated” Holmes series, directed by British director Guy Ritchie. Downey is accompanied by Jude Law, who returns with his (excellent) portrayal of Watson, that I still insist would fit in with a more traditional Holmes movie just as well. This time they face ultimate Holmes baddie Professor Moriarty, played with just the right amount of sneer by Jared Harris (son of the late Richard Harris). In this outing he has become a major controller in the arms business, and is attempting to pit half of Europe against the other half, so he can profit from the arms sales.

The frenetic pace and slow motion “thought process” scenes appear here, intact  from the first movie. Holmes and Watson’s relationship is as funny, testy, and homo-erotic as always. Thankfully, the movie doesn’t have the faux-mystical plot of the first. It also has more action, which is a double edged sword, as there’s perhaps a bit too much of it. The action scenes are always entertaining though.

Worthy of special mention is the indomitable Stephen Fry, playing Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock’s older, smarter brother. Fry is a delight, wherever he makes an appearance, no matter how unclothed he is doing it.

The true strength of these movies is their wit, speed, and general sense of fun, and Downey and Law’s relationship is the icing on the cake. They bicker, fight, and needle each other, but this is a bro-mance as tight as Gibson and Glover in Lethal Weapon. Not even Watson’s marriage can come between them. His fiance is played by Kelly Reilly, and it’s a pity (along with Noomi Rapace) that she doesn’t get to do more.

One thing she does do is get thrown out of a train, falling down an incredible distance to land in a river. Unhurt. There are a few moments like this that don’t actually make any sense in a world with anything near our laws of physics. One implied moment involving an oxygen breather and a waterfall makes no sense, but with the energy of this movie you end up not caring. That’s the mark of a good action movie I think. The sincere (if tongue-in-cheek) acting, and the pure adrenaline just carry you right along.

OVERALL

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows improves on its predecessor in most ways, though it is a bit lagging toward the end. But Downey and Law both bring their A-game, and the energy from the first is present and accounted for. Worth your time if you liked the first one, and maybe even if you didn’t.

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127 – 50/50 (2011)

50/50 Review

4/5 stars

Director – Jonathan Levine

Cast – Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Gordon, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, Angelica Huston, Serge Houde

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A cancer comedy? ……..really? Well, kinda, yes.

50/50 follows Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character, Adam, as he deals with the fact he has cancer. His friend Kyle (Seth Rogen) is his main support, but he looks also to his girlfriend Rachel (Bryce Dallas Howard) and his young therapist Katie (played admirably by Anna Hendricks). His mother (Angelica Huston) tries to help, but Adam finds her unhelpful, and his father has an advanced form of Alzheimers, and doesn’t remember who Adam is.

His girlfriend cheats on him… that would be a hard pill to take under any circumstances. Kyle witness it and provides proof to Adam while Rachel is in the room, in a hilarious scene that is one of the movie’s best.

As I think about that scene, it seems to me that the comedy in the movie seems mainly to stem from Rogen’s character. He definitely is funny here, but to give him all the credit for this films comedy would be to undervalue the naturalist comedy we get from Godron-Levitt and Hendricks. In other words, Rogen may get he dick-jokes, but the richness in personality and humanity come from the interaction between Adam and Katie. You come for Rogen, stay for the “romance”.

An interesting point is that the character of Adam is a very reactive one. He is someone whom things happen to, and the movie mainly deals with how he deals with the difficult events he encounters. At first this bugged me, I must admit. I wanted Adam to go out and initiate some plot points, to start some stuff himself. Then I realized that this is the strength of the movie; as this is the very nature of cancer it only makes sense to have the character reactionary. When it comes to cancer, there is not much one can do… just go with it and hope.

50/50 is really a “dramedy” I suppose, mixing Seth Rogen style yucks with some fairly serious drama. Cancer is a serious matter of course, and some people may have been turned off by the identification of this as a “cancer comedy”. One can’t really blame them. They needn’t worry here, though, as cancer is treated with respect, but its own type of respect. The way this movie treats cancer is the same way these guys do… they avoid talking about it, and if they do they laugh about it. It is its own way of dealing with things, but not a less valid one.

OVERALL

50/50 is a dramedy that deals well with potentially problematic subject matters. Rogen is funny, Gordon-Levitt is grounded, and Hendricks is awesome. I would recommend this to almost everyone, as long as they can take a bit of Rogen-style comedy.

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126 – Legion (2009)

Legion Review

 2/5 stars

 Director – Scott Charles Stewart

 Cast – Paul Bettany, Dennis Quaid, Lucas Black, Kate Walsh,Tyrese Gibson, Willa Holland, Charles S. Dutton, Kevin Durand, Adrianne Palicki, Jon Tenney, Doug Jones

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 Legion is another of those insufferable pseudo-religious, heavily CGI’ed creature flicks that are sprouting up. You know the type…

This particular story follows a group of people stuck in a roadside diner during the apocalypse. Not just any apocalypse, this is The Apocalypse. God has decided that Mankind has once again fallen from a position of grace, and He must wipe them out, ala The Great Flood. But no natural disaster will do this time (perhaps God has had enough of Roland Emmerich films too), and he decides to take us all out with zombies; and yes, God hates slow zombies too.

An infected sinner may expect to find their teeth rapidly sharpen, their eyes look like a stoner’s, and may even find they can walk up walls and onto the ceiling. An outside wall appears to be a different matter however, especially if there is a main character on the roof. Apparently they can only walk up walls on the inside of a house. It’s all in the fine print.

But there is hope! The child of one of the embattled survivors is… is… well, it’s actually never said what he is, but we are told over and over again that he is the “Only Hope”, that he “wasn’t meant to be born”. This is explained to us by an ex-angel (Paul Bettany) who was told to kill the baby, but disagreed with God and now fights with the survivors. For defying God he has lost his wings, but we know he is good because he wears a white trench coat, instead of the black ones worn by the other angels. Yet we never know who or what the child is… it’s kind of annoying.

The ending could not be more open-ended, but the problem here is that we have so many questions about the movie we just saw that to promise another is ridiculous. We want questions answered now, not in the next movie. I don’t know whether they were actually planning a sequel, but it felt like it. Frankly, we all like seeing Paul Bettany get some work, but a sequel to this wouldn’t be worth it.

I will give Legion brownie points for trying. There is no campiness here; everything is treated with the utmost sincerity. Unfortunately, that approach led to the other extreme. We have numerous boring monologue scenes that do nothing towards advancing the plot or, it could be argued, enriching the characters; we have a tone that starts at depressingly dingy and gets consistently worse; and we have angels that dress like fetish enthusiasts and apparently attend marksmanship and martial arts courses.

If I have to mention some good things about the movie, I would say that one particular sequence involving an ambush at some gas pumps was actually fairly exciting, until the incident with the child, which crossed a line for me. Those who have seen the movie will know what I mean; those who don’t may be able to guess at what type of thing I am referring. Dennis Quaid is quite good here, playing a role that would be expected of a lesser known character actor, and Charles S. Dutton is very likable as a hook handed cook.

Paul Bettany seems to be heading into B-movie territory, which is a huge pity, because he is a talented man. He was great in those two Russell Crowe movies Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World and A Beautiful Mind, and more than hold his won against his forceful co-star. I wish his star had risen a bit higher to be honest. He deserves more than this kind of thing.

OVERALL

Legion is a dingy, dark, and joyless action/horror movie. Its cast may be much better than the movie deserves, but even they can only do so much. Too many questions are left unanswered, and the many boring monologue scenes stop the movie dead in its tracks. I can’t really think of anyone I would recommend this to.

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TRAILER

 “Legion” on other websites:

 IMDB —– Rotten Tomatoes —– Wikipedia

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