Legion

After a lengthy session of Supernatural I somehow decided that further biblical apocalypse action fantasy might possibly be a good thing. Well, alright, not a good thing, no one went into this film expecting a good thing, not even the people who made it, but it might have been a silly but engaging gothic romp with some memorable takes on the deal. Something like Constantine, if it had had a functioning human being in the lead role.

After some spat with The Old Man, the Archangel Michael, played by Paul Bettany sporting a permanent grimace, decides to defend a last bastion of mankind from the End of Days itself; A band of poorly thought out characters holed up in a truck stop somewhere in Cliché, USA. He does this largely by closing the door. The will of the Almighty and all the armies of heaven are foiled by plate glass windows and a Yale lock. The moral presumably being that if The Rapture does occur and you happen to not be one of the few who ascends unto heaven, try to stay indoors.

There is a genuinely sinister bit near the start where an old lady (see above) creeps everyone the hell out, but after that the film proceeds to roll out the banal. Entirely what is expected of christian end of the world fare. The Horsemen turn up without horses, there are flies and faux latin chanting and yadda yadda yadda yadda. There are probably some human characters in it but they're really not worth mentioning. They all stand around yakking about themselves for no real reason and then the decidely humble pregnant lady inevitably gives birth.

Somewhere around this point God sends in the big guns, in the form of the crazy mercenary from Lost, who is emphatically less interesting than Tilda Swinton, wields a nasty looking club and has the power to navigate doors. A truly forgettable showdown occurs and they all run away to rebuild mankind in the ashes, and one assumes in this second age of man, humans will be all righteous and such and that a little racial genocide was all that was needed to set them on the path.

It's all pure going-through-the-motions stuff. It makes no attempt to say anything about anything, the fantasy is not any kind of allegory or lesson. It's just there so that they can put big fat wings on the posters. Indeed, the entire film seems to exist solely to support the advertising campaign, as if it was an inconvenience to make an actual film in order to justify taking peoples money. It was certainly an inconvenience to watch.