Bullet Points: Legendary

In this installment of Bullet Points, I will review the Scott Adkins/Dolph Lundgren film, Legendary. Also known as Legendary: Tomb of the Dragon.

This movie is unlike any other Scott Adkins film I have seen. And while I don’t blame Adkins for wanting to branch out and prove he can play more than a guy who can fight, you do feel a bit robbed of not seeing Adkins do what he does best.

• Back Story: The movie begins with Travis Preston (Adkins) and Harker (Lundgren) are on an expedition to find a prehistoric bear. Preston, the cryptozoologist, wants to capture the animal, study it and keep it safe. Harker, the hunter, wants to say he killed a prehistoric bear.  Unfortunately tragedy strikes during the expedition and a young member of the team dies. This causes a rift between Preston and Harker.

• The Premise: When Preston is approached by a lawyer representing a mysterious wealthy client, about researching a prehistoric crocodile like creature that has been spotted in China, Preston reassembles his team (minus Harker and the dead guy) and they are off to China to capture the sea beast, unfortunately Harker is already there with his team and they are looking to kill the mythological creature that has been doing some killing of its own. Who will complete their mission first? Or will the creature kill them all?

• Never Seen Him So Happy: Maybe it is just me, but it felt like Scott Adkins smiles a lot in this movie. Probably more than all his other movies combined, at least the ones that I’ve seen. Adkins does pull off the role, I’m wondering how much Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones he studied before making this film.
• Special Effects: For this not being a major studio film, the effects are not that bad. I feared there might be some SyFy Original Movie level effects in this one which would have killed any suspension of disbelief and would have changed the entire complexion of the movie.

• When He’s Bad He’s Better: When Dolph plays the hero in a movie it is hit or miss at best. But you put Dolph in the villain role and you are pretty much guaranteed a quality performance from him. Legendary is no exception. He’s smug, he’s arrogant and he loves to hunt.  He’s not over the top evil (like my favorite Dolph Role in Universal Soldier), but it is obvious that he’s competitive and he wants to win and will stoop to levels that Preston and his team would not.

I got a real National Treasure vibe from Legendary, just replace history with cryptozoology. It is an action/adventure movie, but there’s definitely more of an emphasis on the adventure than the action. Something I expected when I saw the PG-13 rating.

So If you are yearning to see Scott Adkins beat a bunch of people up, don’t watch this movie. And honestly it really wouldn’t make sense for a cryptozoologist to also have the fighting skills of a ninja. He’s a man of science for goodness sake. But if you are looking for a change of pace where your Scott Adkins movies are concerned this one might be worth a look.