Legion

Legion

Full disclosure.  I enjoy apocalyptic movies.  Even when they aren't very good, I still think they are fun to watch.  There is something appealing about having a small band of would-be survivors wandering around as the world falls apart around them and as the audience tries to guess who is going to die in what order.  But sometimes, the concept just goes too far even for me.  So here is where we have Legion, the movie where God decides he wants to destroy sinful mankind, but instead of sending a flood he decides to send a bunch of monsters to attack a diner.

Oh, sure, it's technically more complicated than that - involving angels, prophecies, unborn saviors of humanity, blah blah blah.  Really this movie is about a bunch of monsters attacking a diner.  Inside the diner, we have a nice little cast led by Lucas Black, Dennis Quaid, Adrianne Palicki, Tyrese Gibson, and Charles S. Dutton.  They are protected by a fallen angel, Michael (played by Paul Bettany), who in the opening scene inexplicably cuts off his own wings and disgards his badass heavenly weapons in a misguided belief that a bunch of machine guns are more effective tools against the apocalypse.

I'll admit, I do admire one thing about the film; it tries to take its time in the beginning.  I like that they take time to slow build to the chaos.  We are introduced to everyone in the diner one at a time.  With a better script, that means we actually would have cared about these characters as they started dying.  I also enjoyed the one real good scene in the movie (and the scene that made the trailers so entertaining), when a little old demon grandma runs loose in the diner trying to kill everyone.  This scene had some over the top, Sam Raimi/Evil Dead-style silliness that made it really fun.  If only the whole movie had been like that...

...because after grandma's exit via the business end of a shotgun, the movie gets bad.  Really bad.  And fast.  All logic gets thrown out the window, characters die in the lamest possible ways, and actors wait around, grimly moping about because they can't wait to be killed off so they can get the heck out of this trashy movie.  Worst of all, the movie stops even pretending to have any sort of logic, especially when the archangel Gabriel shows up to wreak havoc and block bullets with his super wings.  While Kevin Durand makes for an imposing and a strangely sympathetic villain, this whole climactic battle is terrible, starting bad, getting worse, and then occasionally pausing between punches to make some bold, theological statements that befuddle me ("You gave him what he asked for; I gave him what he needed.").

SPOILER: For the second time in a row, I am reviewing a film where the ending makes no sense.  So if God changes his mind and decides that he no longer wants the apocalypse to happen, then why are our surviving heroes driving around in the last scene, armed to the teeth and ready to wage the war against the next wave of possessed monster angels?  I think it is because the producers wanted to rip off the powerful last scene of Terminator, where a pregnant Sarah Conner drives around in the desert, armed and ready for Judgment Day.  But in Terminator, it all makes sense; Judgement Day is coming.  In Legion, Judgement Day has come and gone and everything is now cool again...so what's the big deal?  This movie makes my head hurt.

MVP: 
I have to give Paul Bettany some credit.  Although he is better known for his dramatic work, and his slight frame doesn't seem very tough, Bettany throws himself into the role with gritty earnestness.  Bettany must have known that he was making a garbage film, but that doesn't stop him from giving the same professionalism as he would in one of his Oscar contenders like A Beautiful Mind or Master and Commander.  He's a good actor, and a surprisingly solid action lead. Let's give him something better than this.

BEST LINE:
Michael: "And yet, in the midst of all this darkness, I see some people who will not be bowed.  I see people who will not give up, even when they know all hope is lost.  Some people, who realize being lost is so close to being found.  I see you, Jeep."  Here's an example of a bad line made good by Bettany's performance. It ends up being one of the few nice moments in the movie...

TRIVIA:  
The tattoos on Michael are written in Enochian, the language of angels supposedly revealed to John Dee and Edward Kelley in the 16th Century.   I have to admit, that is a pretty cool detail.  I wish the rest of the movie had been this thought-out.

The Tourist

The Tourist

I was actually excited about The Tourist. The teaming of Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp in a Hitchcockian light-hearted romp through Venice seemed appealing. Then the movie came out to middling and bored reviews, and my enthusiasm waned. But with one of my favorite cities in the world, Venice, being featured prominently, I knew it was just a matter of time before I saw it-for better or worse.

Alexander Pierce is a mysterious fugitive who has stolen a massive amount of money from a gangster and is also wanted by the British authorities (led by Paul Bettany from A Beautiful Mind and a former James Bond, Timothy Dalton) because he owes $744 million in back taxes to England. Pierce’s lover Elise (Angelina Jolie) is told to throw the hunters off his scent by picking a random shlub on the train to Venice and showering him with attention so that the police and the gangsters will suspect him, taking the heat off the real Alexander Pierce. The poor shlub just happens to be Frank (Johnny Depp), a boring math teacher who is visiting Italy. What is supposed to follow is a fun, sexy romp of mistaken identity, thrilling escapes from bad guys and heated chemistry between Elise and Frank.

The problem is, frankly, the movie is kind of boring. Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp never quite work the screen like you want – the problem is the movie doesn’t know what it wants. They have two choices. 1) They can follow the storyline and have the hapless innocent, slightly dull, fish out of water being wooed by a women waaayyy out of his league – in this case, your chemistry should be forced because that is where you get the drama (and the humor). Or 2) the other option is to forget realism and go straight for Hollywood hotness. Who cares if he is playing a boring math teacher; this is Johnny Depp, one of the sexiest men in the world. And he is sharing the screen with one of the sexiest women in the world. Let them smolder! You can go either direction and be effective, but the problem with The Tourist is that they want it both ways and that just can’t work. The movie probably works best when they let Depp play bumbling. His terrified dash into the bathroom when he is first attacked by the Russian gangsters is a funny scene and provided the proper vibe that the whole movie should have had. Instead, the movie's tone wobbles all over the place, with some scenes played for broad laughs and others seemingly deadly serious. The movie is also burdened with a few twists that are in the movie just for the sake of having a twist. The big twist is clearly just there for effect and makes absolutely no sense when you consider the rest of the movie. It is one of the more poorly conceived twists I have seen in a long, long time.

It’s a pity because the movie could have been fun. It looks great, the supporting cast (which also includes Rufus Sewell from Dark City) is solid, and the Venice scenics are stunning to behold. The director is Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who directed the Oscar-winning The Lives of Others and the writers include the awesome scribes Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) and Julian Fellowes (Godsford Park). So it really is just a shame the whole thing never quite works. The Tourist desperately wants to be To Catch a Thief, the Hitchcock masterpiece starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. Instead, it’s a missed opportunity and a dull one at that.

BEST LINE:

Inspector: "You wish to report a murder?"

Frank: “Attempted murder.”

Police: “That's not so serious.”

Frank: “Not when you downgrade from murder. But when you upgrade it from room service, it's quite serious.”

MVP:

I think I will go with the Director of Photography, the terrific John Seale (Oscar winner for The English Patient). If nothing else, The Tourist is a great looking movie, with terrific use of lighting and composition. When the action on screen wasn’t working for me, I could always switch my brain over and admire Seale's artistry at work. It doesn't hurt that he knows how to capture Venice at her alluring and mysterious best. I think I need to go be a tourist myself...

TRIVIA:

Tom Cruise was originally going to play Frank, but then dropped out. He was replaced by Sam Worthington, who also dropped out due to creative differences. Cruise and Worthington...chose wisely...