Wait one
minute! Is that Dolph Lundgren AND Scott Adkins on the
box cover of this movie 'Legendary: Tomb of the Dragon'?
Plus this is some kind of Chinese produced movie so that HAS
to mean plenty of high flying, wire-fu ass kicking action for
one and all! Heck yes… bring that on. Oh
wait… there is no high flying, wire fu ass kicking action in
this movie. In fact this is like a SyFy channel creature
feature similar to 'Boa vs. Python' or 'Mega Snake'.
Well that's disappointing. Not so much the movie itself
as it was certainly serviceable as a creature feature, but
dang… it had Scott Adkins and Dolph Lundgren in it. Were
Corin Nemec and Costas Mandylor busy that week or
something? Because if I saw those two in a movie about a
giant lizard, I wouldn't have been all that
disappointed.
Adkins is Dr. Travis Preston, an esteemed fellow studying in
the art of Cryptozoology. Now wait one moment because we
need to ask where in the heck did Dr. Preston get this PhD of
his. I mean Cryptozoology is the study of creatures that
basically don't exist, which means it's the study of pretty
much nothing, and I'm not aware of any accredited universities
tossing out bachelors, let alone PhD's in that discipline… but
we will roll with it.
Anyway, Travis is kind of sad right
now because on his last excursion somebody on his team got
killed, largely due to the indiscretions of big game hunter
Harker (Lundgren) who was supposed to be there for protection,
but instead was seeking glory. Kind of. Actually
it's really Travis' fault because the team did mention that
it's almost sundown and they should leave before the beast
came, but he didn't listen. I kind of understand the
logic of Travis because when you're in the business of
searching for things that don't exist, and then there comes
the chance it might exist, I can see where
one might be
willing to risk one's life. Anyway, one day Travis gets
a visit from a Mr. McConnell (James Lance), a lawyer with a
big client who thinks he has a line on some thought to be
extinct giant lizard which is terrorizing folks on some big
construction dig in China. Now with the
Cryptozoological passion for searching for things that don't
exist is fired up once again, Travis reunites the team and
heads for China for some mythical creature studying.
Sure enough, there's a giant lizard running around eating
Chinese people, but unfortunately for Travis his arch enemy,
Harker, has gotten there first, hired by the construction
company to kill this thing. Travis and his team want to
save it. I know Harker's the bad guy in this equation,
but the thing is killing people. At a rather alarming
rate. So I kind of think it needs to die too.
Regardless of all of that, the race is on. Travis and
his team are attempting to set a trap to save the beast,
Harker and his team have their automatic rifles loaded up to
destroy the beast, and the beast could care less, just very
happy that these lunatics have strolled into its home,
delivering juicy human meals to its cozy cave enclave.
To be completely honest with you, once you get past that fact
that Adkins and Lundgren aren't in a crazy action picture
kicking each other in the face, 'Legendary: Tomb of the
Dragon' wasn't so bad. I mean it wasn't great or
anything, but it wasn't terrible. In fact, if it did air
on the SyFy channel, it would rank as one of their best movies
ever. But to be clear, I didn't see any legends, tombs
or dragons… unless you want to count Dolph Lundgren as
legendary, which we are more than willing to do here at the
FCU.
You see, not surprisingly, Dolph Lundgren is the best thing
going on in this movie. With three decades of experience
under his belt, Dolph understands with crystal clarity what
he's good at, what he can do, what he can't do, and here he
was living in his element. You need someone to be big,
tough, mean and ugly? You have a few cool tough guy
lines in your script and you need them delivered in a way that
makes an audience believe? Dolph is your guy. He's
almost genetically engineered to be a cinema villain, and he
does it well.
Scott Adkins on the other hand, love him as we do, has a
tougher row to hoe. Scott certainly looks the part of a
traditional leading man, but he too plays a much better
villain or anti-hero. His second 'Ninja' movie was
better than the first one, in part, because he went from
leading man to super angry anti-hero. It's what he does
best. Here was saddled with being the leading man,
reciting often painful dialog and pretty much not kicking
anybody in the face, which isn't playing to my man's strengths
as an actor. He was also forced to mask his British accent,
which often faded in and out, and we don't know why the
filmmakers didn't just allow the man to speak in his natural
voice in this international production.
Still, director Eric Styles keeps this nonsense moving
forward. I saw Mr. Styles last film, a RomCom about a
woman trying to get pregnant in 'Miss Conception'. I
don't why I saw it, but I did. And this movie, which had
a was certainly inconsistent in tone at times with its monster
horror movie elements, combined with some Romantic elements
tossed in between the Adkins character of Travis and his
cryptozoological counterpart Dr. Zeng (Yi Huang), still
managed to entertain despite a CGI lizard that looked like ass
on some occasions. Other times it didn't look so bad.
Yes, we'd rather Scott and Dolph punch each other in the face,
and yes 'Legendary' wasn't the best thing we've seen coming
out of China recently, but we still live for this stuff, and
this one, at least, didn't make me want to kill myself after
it was over. Somebody put that blurb on a box cover.
