Legion DVD




Title: Legion
Starring: Paul Bettany, Tyrese Gibson, Charles S Dutton, Dennis Quaid
Director: Scott Stewart
Released: August 9th 2010
Certificate: 15
Duration: 100 minutes
Formats: DVD and Blu-ray (reviewed on Blu-ray)

God is fed up with all our bullshit! The apocalypse is upon us. The weak-willed of the World will be controlled by The Almighty to go out and annihilate the strong. No one will survive.

In this entertaining siege-thriller Paul Bettany is the rogue archangel Michael who swaps his allegiance and sides with humans over God. Although his reasoning is a bit crap – he sees the selfless exploits of Jeep Hanson (Lucas Black), a young man, who would do whatever it takes to look after a young girl, named Charlie (Adrianne Palicki) and her baby. Yes, Jeep is a decent guy but frankly if it wasn’t for Dennis “The Quaid” Quaid being his Daddy I’d also think that he was a bit simple in the head.

Legion DVDMichael arrives from Heaven at the diner where the entire film plays out in beautifully claustrophobic-horror-film-style to protect Charlie and her baby –the only one that can save mankind and lead humanity out of its darkness.

It’s a tall order but director Scott Charles Stewart delivers suspense, action, heroism and even a few laughs all from a deserted desert diner with a handful of players. Most notable is Paul Bettany in the lead role, an excellent British actor who usually plays softer characters, it’s interesting to see him here dual-welding massive guns and firing indiscriminately upon hordes of humans-turned-demons. It’s also one of his biggest leading roles and he carries the movie with some genuine credibility. Charles S Dutton and Dennis Quaid are also top-notch actors – they both do a solid job but are surprisingly underused while some of the other actors (such as Tyrese Gibson, Willa Holland, Kate Walsh and John Tenney) could have easily have been left out to make more room for them.

It’s fun while it lasts although there are a lot of unanswered questions and plenty of scope to have had a far more in depth theological discussion within this action/horror movie that would have really made it more interesting.

Legion looks great on Blu-ray despite the fact that the entire movie happens at night which you might expect would create a lot of grain within the picture. Visuals however are clear and the colours are good. The sound is also a decent mix through the front and rear speakers. Gunfire and screams ping around from back to front and put the viewer in the midst of the action.

The special features focussing on the special effects are also interesting, looking at the visual effects and at how the CGI was rendered as well as getting comments from the actors and the director. There is also an interesting featurette on how the location of Paradise Falls was designed and created.

Over all, Legion is an enjoyable – if mindless – film that is made even better by a great reproduction on Blu-ray with a bunch of decent special features.

Author : Kevin Stanley