Ridley Scott has made a career of successive genre-jumping. Unfortunately, his foray into fantasy called Legend, though perhaps one of the most visually appeasing within the field, is suspiciously lacking. More specifically, it is missing a trademark element found within most every Scott film: meaning. Granted, we are given a traditional battle between good and evil. However, the work is devoid of perplexing, question-evoking insight into the human predicament which the director has proven himself, time and time again, to be aptly capable. What results is a vastly disappointing film whose aesthetic chasm is so large, even its glitter and sheen cannot veil the production’s lack of purpose.
The Lord of Darkness (Tim Curry), attempting to extinguish light and cast the world into the Age of Darkness via the destruction of the unicorn, is seeking Princess Lily (Mia Sara) as his dark bride. However, Jack (Tom Cruise), and his legion of elfin companions, hope to thwart the demonic antagonist’s intentions, thus saving the world as well as Lily.
Scott’s Manichean, Tolkien-esque fantasy is based on a screenplay by William Hjortsberg, the author responsible for Falling Angel, the original source material for Alan Parker’s Angel Heart. Obviously, Hjortsberg is no stranger to black-and-white scenarios where good and evil (the latter cast, no less, in the figure of Satan himself on multiple occasions) have staunch lines of demarcation separating them. Unfortunately, Scott should have fled from such a script instead of attempting to salvage, draft after futile draft, a work whose premise was well, well beneath him. As such, what is left is little, for the work it neither challenging nor revealing, only visually stunning.
On this note, the one thing that can be said of Legend–which accounts for its acclaim by-and-large–is that it hosts perhaps the most dominating visual characterization of Satan ever set to screen. Obviously, as Hjortsberg’s work attests, there are two manners in which to present the Dark Prince. One, as Milton and Dante would have him in all his red-skinned, horned glory (Legend) or two, as a metaphor for evil as manifested via a corrupt businessman or the like (Angel Heart). Undoubtedly, the former is more challenging in that no presentation could ever hold a flame (sorry) to one’s personal vision, but points are nonetheless allotted to those who give such an honest effort and succeed with a fifty-one percent or greater accuracy given our predispositions by way of a rough outline from the learn’d scribes of yesteryear. That said, perhaps Ridley did go a bit overboard with the size of the Big Guy’s horns . . .
Ridley Scott’s Legend is a simplistic, short-sighted fantasy which undercuts the director’s potential. It fails to engage or enlighten and attempts to fill the void where substance would reside with Academy Award-nominated spectacle. Obviously, reflected in the brevity of this review, there is little of consequence to speak of outside of these shallow, time-consuming features of a film which was D.O.A. during its conception.
Conversation piece: One of the figures which comprise Jack’s collective, Blix the Goblin (Alice Playten), was visually modeled after the apparently goblin-esque features of Keith Richards.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
