In a dystopic 2036 where war rages across the Earth, Captain Aldrich is a former military hero, now convicted of desertion and languishing on death row.
Aldrich is offered the chance at a pardon if he will join a special forces mission to infiltrate an enemy facility. The mission will be led by the rather uptight and by-the-book Major Agatha Doyle, but otherwise the entire team will be death-row prisoners who have useful skills for the mission. All been offered the same deal as Aldrich.
It's true that most of them aren't going to need to worry about going back to death row, since they don't make it out of the mission alive, but they don't know that, and should perhaps act like "not being executed" is an actual motivation for them.
The denouement of the film is also rather weak. While the revelation of the monster's identity is actually halfway good (even if it looks rubbish), pretty much nothing else about it works. The villain's only motivation for the climactic scene even happening appears to be "I must deliver an evil monologue". Which goes about as well for him as you might expect, particularly after he falls prey to a bit of grade-school level deception.
The mission begins and the team soon gain access to the base. They face a surprising lack of resistance and upon further inspection discover their enemies bodies piled up in a storeroom. It is clear that someone - or something - has already rampaged through the base. And while it may be an enemy of their enemy, that definitely does not make it their friend ...
This film is basically the Sci-Fi Dirty Dozen meets Predator in an Aliens environment. There are plenty of echoes of each of those films in both the script and the direction.
Legion is much more cheaply made than those films though, with the lack of budget being conspicuous when it comes to the monster. It is seen only briefly, right at the end of the film, and frankly it doesn't look very good when we do see it. Its attacks before that are all executed as yellow filtered POV shots - the Predator inspiration is pretty obvious - and essentially just consist of a sudden lunge at their target before the camera cuts away and we see other people react to the victim's screams. Which maybe works once or even twice, but when it's the only technique you've got, it rather robs the film of any kind of escalation or gear change. It's like a Friday the 13th film where you never actually see Jason kill anyone.
The cast is also clearly picked with the budget in mind. There's a lot of name recognition without big name money demands crammed in here: Parker Stevenson, Terry Farrell, Corey Feldman and musician Rick "Jessie's Girl" Springfield.
Experienced stunt woman Tricia Peters is also featured in the movie in what was probably her most significant acting role as the near silent special forces soldier Goodis. The character's a fun one - especially in a film filled with obnoxious motormouths - but alas she goes out like a chump because this movie does not want us to have nice things.
Terry Farrell (who had just left Star Trek: Deep Space 9) plays Major Doyle as overly officious and frankly out of her depth - rather like Lieutenant Burke in Aliens - and a major subplot of the film is her coming to learn that sometimes you have to do more than just blindly follow orders. It's nice to see something like this play out in a low-budget offering like this. Not that there's anything especially novel about the way this sub-plot plays out, and it's also pretty heavy-handed in its execution. Any half-alert viewer will probably be a couple of steps ahead of her. But character development is by no means guaranteed in this kind of movie. Certainly most of the other characters won't develop past a couple of formulaic traits!
Speaking of those other characters, he team's complete lack of discipline during the mission is rather problematic. I know they are all military prisoners and therefore by definition not model soldiers, but they are also explicitly told that they are being monitored during the mission and that only a good performance will save them from execution. In those circumstances, it seems odd that most of them make so little effort to not act like screw-ups.
It's true that most of them aren't going to need to worry about going back to death row, since they don't make it out of the mission alive, but they don't know that, and should perhaps act like "not being executed" is an actual motivation for them.
The denouement of the film is also rather weak. While the revelation of the monster's identity is actually halfway good (even if it looks rubbish), pretty much nothing else about it works. The villain's only motivation for the climactic scene even happening appears to be "I must deliver an evil monologue". Which goes about as well for him as you might expect, particularly after he falls prey to a bit of grade-school level deception.
If like me you're an inveterate fan of such low-budget SF fare, then you might find that Legion has a kind of naff charm. Everyone else should definitely stay away.
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