I am a sucker for a great sports movie, which is ironic since I’ve never entirely appreciated sports on their own merits. But storytelling doesn’t get much more rousing than Rocky, Slapshot, A League of Their Own… Hell, give me Necessary Roughness any day. Unfortunately the new wrestling movie Legendary doesn’t qualify for greatness. All the pieces are there but they’re faded from overuse, and it’s too easy to find a disturbing hidden picture beneath the completed puzzle.
Devon Graye of TV’s Dexter stars as Cal Chetley, a bright young teenager whose family has become estranged after the tragic death of his father. His brother Mike (John Cena of the underrated 12 Rounds, in a perfectly decent performance) is an alcoholic former jock with a history of violence and his mother… Actually, we’ll get to his mother in a minute. She’s weird. Anyway, Cal gets the brilliant idea while fixing up his fish farm to take up wrestling in an attempt to get the family back together. Mike was a star wrestler, after all, so maybe he can train his puny younger brother to greatness, all while bonding at the same time. Things go poorly at times, but eventually they turn out pretty well. That’s the movie.
Legendary probably felt like a pretty safe bet on paper. The healing power of family is at the foreground while the transformative power of sports keeps the plot pushing forward as Cal learns discipline, psychology and the importance of physical fitness. But this isn’t a “Feel Good” movie. There are lots unusual touches which probably made the script distinctive enough to garner its supposed acclaim, but once filmed they give the entire production an unshakable air of creepiness. Case in point: Cal’s relationship with his mother, played by the usually brilliant Patricia Clarkson, is distractingly unhealthy. She insists that Cal is her best friend, but somehow it never feels platonic. She enters his room and spreads out on his bed, languidly offering support in the form of comments that would churn even the most open-minded teenager’s stomach. She calls him variations on the word “stud” and spends a lot of time coaching his would-be love interest Luli (Californication’s Madeleine Martin) in how to court him. Cal returns his Mom’s awkward remarks with assurances that she, too, is physically attractive. You know how in Mrs. Miniver Greer Garson ended up marrying Richard Ney, the actor who played her son, and the sexual chemistry on-screen is unmistakable once you know that? That’s what Legendary feels like, without the actual sordid rumors to back it up.
But that unhealthy relationship with his mother might explain why Cal needs to go to such incredible lengths to turn his estranged brother into a surrogate father figure. It may also explain why he comes across so much like a serial killer. Cal’s machinations to bring the Chetley Family back together again fail to inspire because his actions are too calculated. He manipulates, cajoles, lies and cheats to get what he wants, but it never feels like he really needed these things emotionally. At one point in the film Luli is sexually assaulted in public and Cal’s response – after defending her, admittedly – is that she was asking for it. He says this to her face before making his romantic move, and this poor girl with obvious self-esteem issues apparently accepts his cynical judgment as some bizarre form of compliment since she kisses him right back. It’s too easy to say that Devon Graye was miscast. If anything, his experience playing a teenaged Dexter Morgan implies that the filmmakers were comfortable with this interpretation of the main character, since no effort appears to have been made to differentiate his performance here from that of a budding homicidal maniac.
I wish I was reading too much into Legendary. Maybe I am, but the film just isn’t compelling enough to keep these kinds of distractions from seeping into the foreground. Families and wrestling enthusiasts may be able to ignore the bizarre relationships and character motivations and find a mildly satisfying underdog sports movie that comes complete with training montages and its own Magic Negro (thank you, Danny Glover). That version of Legendary may not be challenging, but it may also be preferable to the horrifying psychodrama threatening to overpower it from within. Still, I can’t remember the last time a sports movie actively horrified me, so maybe there’s something legendary about Legendary after all.
Crave Online Rating: 5 out of 10
