DOWN (Dining Out With Nerds) report: The Book of Eli and Legion

Based on a sample of two consecutive movies with religious themes, people who are religious should definitely avoid said movies. These two movies, at any rate, treat religion so badly that someone’s brain could get scorched.

(Please note I’m not complaining about religion here. I’m complaining about how these movies accidentally make religion look idiotic.)

First, what’s good about these movies? The Book of Eli has some good action scenes and excellently moody atmosphere. Denzel Washington cannot act badly. Gary Oldman has yet another insane bad guy to play, and plays him in a reserved and almost believable way. The unbelievability is the script’s fault, not his. Legion has some nice monsters – especially the throat-ripping little old lady – without being a complete bloodfest. And the heroine, Adrianne Palicki, is seriously cute even when she’s eight months pregnant.

What’s bad about them? Well, Book of Eli makes God look incompetent. God can perform miracles, in fact that’s the point of the ending... but he lets Eli spend thirty years crossing America while on a critical mission. This could have been accomplished in less than one! (3000 miles divided by, say, 10 miles a day on foot, is 300 days. Even if the roads are smashed up and you have to search for water and go around the bad guys, it isn’t thirty years.) And does God help Eli avoid the bad guys? No, He manages to repeatedly steer Eli into the gangs, which forces Eli to kill them all. Note, it’s clear that “kill-them-all”-ing the bad guys is not Eli’s sacred mission. Well, God works in mysterious ways. Ways that are not distinguishable from plot holes.

Legion is worse. Two key sentences are repeated twice: A human says, “I guess God got tired of all the bulls**t.” And Archangel Michael, who is disobeying God’s orders to destroy humanity, tells Gabriel, “You’re doing what He wants. I’m doing what He needs.” Say what? God is cranky and doesn’t know His own mind? True, in the Old Testament, God did get tired of all the bulls**t and crankily destroyed almost everything, although He just sent a flood instead of an angelic army. But Archangels arguing about God’s mental state? And then fighting each other with maces and guns? And then one is killed... and is resurrected? It’s not surprising that Metacritic.com rated Legion worse than Tooth Fairy with The Rock.

Don’t think about these movies. See Sherlock Holmes instead. Robert Downey Jr. is making me a believer.