Review: Legendary

Devon Graye is sensitive, intelligent teen Cal, who is doing well in life and school, despite losing his father to a tragic car accident ten years ago, and a ne’er-do-well older brother Mike (WWE Superstar John Cena) he hasn’t seen in years. Mike, a decorated high school wrestler, blamed himself for dad’s death (He was in the car also, and they were on their way to a match) and hasn’t been home in years. However, Cal makes the somewhat surprising decision to join the school’s wrestling team in its smallest weight division. He’s also rather scrawny and gets picked on at school by the likes of jock Tyler Posey, who is none too pleased to see Cal on the team. Cal goes in search of Mike, and finds him a drunken mess, arrested for getting into a bar fight, and not especially interested in getting to know his younger brother. He sure as hell doesn’t want to return home and face mum. But eventually, the kid gets through to him, and he agrees to teach him how to wrestle. Can this hurt family come together and heal, at long last? The film is narrated by crusty old ‘Red’ (Danny Glover), a local fisherman whom Cal befriends. Madeleine Martin turns up as Cal’s long-time best friend Luli, and the town slut, albeit that she only flashes her boobs for the boys. Not that Cal sees her in that way (Luli on the other hand...)

 

Directed by Mel Damski (yes, the guy who directed “Yellowbeard”!), written by John Posey (who also plays the coach), this 2010 sports drama was produced by WWE Films, and features arguably the WWE’s biggest star since The Rock, in John Cena. Despite being an on-and-off wrestling fan myself, I wasn’t actually looking forward to this much to be honest. For starters, what is Cena, known by (especially older) fans for having a fairly limited ‘move-set’ doing in a film where he teaches someone to wrestle? Smart-arses who don’t enjoy the WWE in fact might wonder why a ‘fake’ wrestler is teaching real wrestling (And FYI, wrestling is no more or less fake than ballet or stunt work, just sayin’!). But all kidding and semantics aside, the main thing that held me back from watching this film any earlier was simply poor word of mouth. It had a ridiculously short transition from big screen to small screen and the reviews weren’t much good, either. Personally I think it’s far from awful, but it’s definitely forgettable, cliché-ridden, and mostly not very well-acted. It’s harmless enough, but pretty damn toothless and nothing you haven’t seen a million times before (Think “Billy Elliott” meets “Rudy” meets “The Wrestler”).

 

Cena isn’t the main star here, that would be young Devon Graye. There’s nothing wrong with his performance, but even putting him in the smallest weight division didn’t for a second have me buying him as an amateur wrestler. I don’t doubt that some kids who get picked on could perhaps make a go of it as high school wrestlers, but not this pipsqueak, sorry. He looks about 13 years-old at most (Co-star Tyler Posey, by comparison looks closer to 18). And it’s a pretty big deal, all things considered. I mean, he doesn’t even look like he gets all that much better by the end of the film. I also felt like the film was never quite sure why he’s wrestling. There’s some mentioning here and there about wanting to get to know his big brother, but there’s also the bullying element, and I wasn’t sure if it was either one or just a combo of both. I’m not even sure if the character himself really knew. I also have to question the idea of pitting Graye against a bully who ends up on the same wrestling team. What’s the point? Where’s the drama in that? The bullying issue, thus never gets any kind of legit payoff.

 

John Cena is actually a problem too, to be honest. Cena is pretty well-known in and out of the WWE for being largely the same guy. That is his on-air character is just as clean-cut, morally upright and so forth as he seems to project himself in real-life too (whether he really is that person is another matter entirely. Who knows?). So casting him here as the often drunk, brawling, ne’er do well does not play to his strengths (for lack of a better word) as a performer. Although a bit old for the part (even as an older brother), I’m not sure if he’s miscast exactly (though it might give pause to those wrestling fans out there who are tired of his Dudley Do-Right persona and want more edge to him, to change their minds), but he’s still pretty wooden and unmemorable. I actually don’t think he’s all that bad an actor, but he doesn’t do much here. His physique, by the way, is monumentally ridiculous. It wasn’t so egregious in a schlocky actioner like “The Marine”, but here he’s meant to be a regular guy, albeit a former athlete. Sure, Cena really is a wrestler (of the pro kind), but the guy’s got no wrist connecting his hands to his ginormous forearms, it just doesn’t look right (Hmmm, wonder why that is...) Then there’s the truly sad case of Danny Glover. This guy used to be able to act, let me tell you. Watch the four “Lethal Weapon” movies, “The Rainmaker”, and even “Switchback”, for proof. But then, around the time of the first “Saw” film, something happened. He developed a slight lisp (dentures, seems to be most people’s guess) and a whole lotta rasp to his voice in many of his films (“Shooter” especially), and his performances have been wildly uneven. In “Saw” he was flagrantly awful, and in “Shooter” he seemed to have lost his damn mind (and that’s not to mention some of his controversial political statements and actions in recent years that have upset many people). Here, Glover is in a no-win situation, cast as the noble Morgan Freeman-esque African-American narrator, his old coot performance borders on the Uncle Remus at times. He’s hardly in the film, but more to the point, his character seems to have hardly any relevance outside of giving that narration. If this were a boxing movie, he’d be the guy taping up the kids hands and tending to his cuts, whilst telling him to let the bigger, more powerful boxer tire himself out. It’s a tired cliché, poor racial stereotype (though his character’s skin colour is never made an overt issue at all), and Glover can’t do a damn thing with it. As for the truly weird, baby-voiced Madeleine Martin...I still don’t know what to make of such an unusual screen presence (I’ve never watched a full episode of “Californication”), except I found her mannered and off-putting. The most impressive performer is probably Patricia Clarkson, who I’m not normally a fan of. She does a solid enough job, though I found her character a little too overprotective, to the point where she was almost unreasonable.

 

I also have to take issue with the handling of the wrestling in the film. We barely learn anything about the sport in the entire film, the training scenes reveal little that even a novice (i.e. John Cena, just kidding) wouldn’t already know.

 

The whole film is pat and Disney-ish (or perhaps more Hallmark Channel), even with elements of bar-brawling and alcohol imbibing. It’s inoffensive, but derivative and not really worth your time. You’ve seen it a hundred times before, and it’s always the same damn thing, just usually better than this.

 

Rating: C