 |
|
 Home
Products
Store
Forum
Warehouse
Contact Us
|
|
|
|
 
|
|
Author
|
Topic: Legion
|
Stu Jamieson
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 524
From: Buccan, Qld, Australia
Registered: Jan 2008
|
posted 06-05-2010 08:38 PM
The time has come. The end is here. We've all been very naughty. It's time to pay the piper. It's time for all of humanity to snuff it. Oh dear. But fear not! Paul Bettany has cut off his wings and rallied to our cause. Get ready for the WWE Angelic Smackdown™! (But only on pay-per-view.)
Remember when Paul Bettany had an acting career? In a steady slide which began seemingly harmlessly with the sleight romance of Wimbledon, Bettany is now reduced to cardboard cut-out bad guys and action heroes. A Beautiful Mind and Master And Commander seem but a distant memory. And sadly for Bettany, he's about to do it all again in Scott Stewart's Priest, his next unholy horror action opus due next year.
As a director, Stewart handles drama like a good visual affects man (which is what he is). His poor grasp of drama is evident in the lengthy sections of meaningless character exposition and endless moralisations over the waste of humanity. These sections bear little relation to the unfolding events and serve only to lengthen the gaps between the all-important (and all too few) action sequences. The birth of humanity's last great hope (we never learn the infant's name but it's probably "JC") is another example of mishandled drama. While, at less than a minute, the delivery of little "JC" may well truly be a miracle, the time committed to the sequence is so scant that we have no opportunity to begin to care. Other moments of drama look plain ridiculous. The barely suppressed panic on the faces of our protagonists when met with a test pattern on a television screen provides a moment of unintended humour. But perhaps this is the films most cutting indictment on our society: the first sign of the impending apocalypse will be TV failure!
Performances are largely inconsequential. Lucas Black, in his portrayal of Jeep (is that really his name?), proves that his uncharismatic performance in The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift was no fluke. Dennis Quaid is.......well, just is (remember when he had an acting career?) Kudos must go to Kevin Durand, however, as angelic warlord Gabriel. In his minute and a half of screen time, Durand exerts a level of gravitas entirely uncharacteristic of an action oriented, faux religious fluff piece such as this.
The tragedy is that in the hands of someone like Sam Raimi, this could have been a lot of fun. It has so much in common with The Evil Dead and the more recent Drag Me To Hell that Raimi would be a natural to direct this. But unfortunately in the hands of a visual effects supervisor, this cause is lost.
3 out of 10.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
All times are Central (GMT -6:00)
|
|
Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM
6.3.1.2
The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion
and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.
|
|
|
|
Printer-friendly view of this topic