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I’m a big fan of candy apples. You know, big, beautiful apples coated in hard, cherry flavoured candy that you have to make it through in order to get to the delicious apple inside. Only sometimes, when you finally work your way through to the apple, it’s rotten. Maybe it’s even got maggots. Imagine, if you will, that that apple is not an apple, but a movie. Imagine that movie is Legion. While Legion’s trailers led me to believe that I would be seeing a fun fantasy twist on battling angels, what I found when I got into the theatre was a hokey, ill conceived, poorly executed movie. In a word: rotten. With maggots too.

The plot of Legion is both simple, complex and unintelligible at the same time. As it begins we are introduced to Charlie, a woman eight-months pregnant and waiting for the experience to be over so she can give her child up for adoption. Through Charlie we meet a cast of interesting characters, all of whom work at a roadside truck stop diner: Jeep (yes – character’s real name) the black sheep son of Bob Hanson (Dennis Quaid), the diner’s owner, and Percy, the cook. On this particular afternoon there is a well-to-do couple in the diner with their rebellious daughter and a young lost man, who is inexplicably carrying a handgun, looking to use the phone. In comes an old woman who the audience knows is a demon of some kind from the trailer. The old woman declares that Charlie’s baby is going to burn, then crawls across the ceiling, attacks someone and is finally killed. Moments later a man (Paul Bettany) pulls up in an LAPD squad car and holds a shotgun to Bob’s head, says he’s an angel and orders them all inside. Slowly but surely we manage to learn that (for some reason) Charlie’s baby is special, that God has ordered it murdered and the human race cleansed along with it and that Grandma wasn’t a demon, but an angel. To be honest, there’s really nothing else to tell because the movie doesn’t actually have any discernible plotline to speak of.

Frankly, the biggest disappointment here is that this movie really couldhave been good. Unfortunately, the script seems to be an attempt by writers Peter Schink and director Scott Stewart — first time writers both — to be clever. It’s like they took all the parts of other movies they’ve admired and tried to knit them together to make this one, leaving this one only a shell, with little to no substance. It would seem that their attempt to go “plot light” is taken from other — better — action movies that have turned into beloved franchises. In this case, however, it just seems like there wasn’t enough material to fill the entire script, which seems impossible considering they were essentially re-telling the biblical story of Christ in a new, deeply uninteresting way. It is more than a little unfortunate that the story delves at all into the Bible, because the writers and filmmakers weren’t actually brave enough to come right out and make a statement about it. While this movie could have been about humanities considerable ills, creating a platform for its audience to discuss both why we deserve another “flood-like” cleansing and why we have the qualities to redeem ourselves, despite a miserable track record, instead it backed away from making any overt statements whatsoever.

Also, and this just bothers me on a personal level, the name of the movie actually refers to something the Devil said… not angels. Just sayin’.

With respect to the talent in the film, no one did a particularly bad job and while you’re watching the film you kind of have to feel bad for them. They all thought they were making a legitimate blockbuster. Charles S. Dutton does the role of Percy the Cook justice by playing him as over-the-top as the character required. While his actual role in the film is completely insignificant, his campy, ridiculous portrayal of this man really stays with you as you leave the theatre, even if it’s only to laugh at. Dennis Quaid, however, deserves a big round of applause for taking not one, but two, movies this year that required nothing from him and in which he looked like he was the only one having any fun. Brilliant work, truly, and deserving of an award for sincere enjoyment of one’s job. Paul Bettany, however, looked like he wanted to turn round and run out the back of the screen, even as he delivered a Razzie-worthy performance of a tortured angel. Poor man. I bet he thought this would elevate his cult status, too. Pity.

Bottom line here, Legion is a pitiful movie that wasn’t worth the hard drive it was loaded on. While I had hoped that this would make the perfect double-bill with Constantine, the movie literally fails on every level and terrifies me that the director’s next movie is titled “Priest” and also starring Bettany. It’s about a priest who violates his vows to save someone from vampires. I can feel the fail coming.