Scott Adkins plays a vanilla scientist who likes to save “thought to be extinct” animals. Dolph Lundgren plays Harker, a guy who likes to shoot extinct animals. Can one movie contain the heat of two legendary D-list action stars? Since I’m a fan of laughably cheap monster movies, where do I sign up?
Legendary (2013)
We open on a team of uninteresting scientists wandering through the woods in Russia. They see signs of a vicious bear attack. Dolph Lundgren plays the ubiquitous Great White Hunter who just wants the kill the damn thing. Scott Adkins thinks they’ve found a prehistoric giant bear and wants to preserve it. Then they are promptly attacked by the giant bear.
Let’s just say the special effects aren’t very special. The thing looks like a choppy animated bear you’re shooting at in Cabela’s Big Game Hunter arcade game. This ain’t The Revenant. Hell, this computer bear makes Yogi Bear look positively majestic. The monsters disappear from frame any time a stuntman is hurled through the air. Bullets have no effect in this movie.
The bear kills their buddy “Scott” and the scene just sort of ends and the bear walks off. What? If Dolph is breathing, you know he’d try to kill it. Instead, Dolph the macho man sues Adkins for not letting him kill the bear? Or something. This movie is dumb.
Now Vanilla Scientist and his boring soap opera level actor scientist friends are hired to find a different legendary beast in China. Something called a “Shocate.” I’m a fan of cryptozoological nonsense and I’ve never heard of this damn thing. A Chinese worker is taken out by a giant Komodo dragon-looking lizard. There are supposed to be jump scares in the movie, but the only thing scary here is the sheer volume of beer I’d have to drink to make this movie the least bit frightening.
So back to the non-story, and guess what? Dolph shows up in China, takes over the expedition, and he’s still kind of a toolbar. Since this is a PG-13 movie, I’m looking forward to when Dolph gets bloodlessly impaled by a unicorn or something. After a totally pointless autopsy scene, Dolph continues to order people around and declare his desire to murder extinct monsters. And then Vanilla Scientist sends him staggering from one punch. Man, Dolph is really losing his edge since the glory days of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. To Dolph’s credit, he’s still in good shape and seems to be enjoying himself, which is always a feature of his films, never mind how risible they are.
I can’t say I know much about Scott Adkins. He’s supposed to be this big deal in direct-to-video action movies. He’s been in a slew of pit fighter movies, but Legendary wants him to act, not punch monsters in the face. A bigger sense of humor and a helping of nacho cheese would’ve made this movie better. The action scenes are timid, with one scene where Adkins makes a wussy explosion and they are slowly chased by dudes on motorcycles.
The giant computer monster attacks continue to arrive at a torrid pace. There is a bad scene where Adkins, in too tight khakis, chases the goofy iguana through some trees. It gets away. Seriously, this so-called “shocate” looks like Rango on HGH. If it were wearing a Hawaiian shirt, it might look more threatening. The special effects team never seem to figure out how to animate the monsters to bite anybody, so they sort of open their mouths and hover over people.
Then there’s a worse scene where Vanilla Scientist goes mano a lizardo in a cave. Rango pounces on him and gets him in the Harryhausen position where the monster is trying to bite you but you are miraculously holding his neck back with a rifle. Except, with effects this cheap, the rifle is clearly poking through the computer animation. Then something happens off-screen and, in the next shot, the lizard is shot or unconscious, or sleeping. I had no damn idea what happened until I watched it four times with subtitles on. They shot the lizard with tranquilizer darts and then Adkins just bored it to death until it fell asleep. Bravo, filmmakers. (Sarcastic clap.)
Then Adkins and Dolph get into another argument about whether or not to shoot the unconscious iguana. Then Vanilla Scientist and Dolph wrestle over the rifle in a badly choreographed action movie way. Seriously, both of these guys have decades of fighting experience and this is worse than a John Wayne punch-out in a saloon scene. I accidentally left subtitles on and there’s the funny caption, “Both growl,” then Vanilla Scientist audibly snaps Dolph’s fingers, but the Dolphster shakes that off a second later. Then a bigger Rango comes out and slowly off-camera eats a dude and chases everyone around an indistinct cave set for 20 minutes.
BOTTOM LINE: Legendary is so watered down and tame, it’s a wonder who the target audience for this thing is. Way too many people survive because the Rango lizard sucks at eating people. Also, you have two action stars and there’s barely any action set pieces, let alone any novel ideas or creativity. This is about scientists looking for legendary monsters and the best you can do is a bear and an iguana? Through basic filmmaking incompetence and bad computer graphics, the monsters are just not scary. Then they comically tease a sequel looking for a large, prehistoric bird creature. Ooh, can’t wait for Canary-zilla. That will definitely send chills down my spine.