The Legend Movie Review: This template film starring Saravanan is excessive & overlong

Title: The Legend
Cast: Legend Saravanan and others
Director: JD, Jerry
Run-Time: 160 minutes
Rating: 2/5

‘The Legend’ is a sign that we are advancing as a society because a film hero is worried about a cure for diabetes instead of losing his brain over discovering a cure for illiteracy. This is akin to an onscreen saviour itching to end underemployment because unemployment is no longer vexing the vast majority of voluntarily unemployed youths of India. See, we have to be positive in life, especially when we voluntarily submit ourselves to a comprehensively overconfident film like ‘The Legend’.    

There is formula. Then there is this film called ‘The Legend’, where the writing department seemed to have worked blissfully in silos. One writer was told to pen laboratory scenes where our scientist-hero utters elementary scientific truths as though nobody in the room has ever seen a Standard V science textbook. Another writer was told to write scenes between hero and comedian after being given full liberty to copy from the oldest possible movies of every conceivable outdated masala filmmaker down the Vindhyas. Yet another writer was motivated to dedicate himself to writing song situations and this particular writer was mercilessly fooled into believing that the situations he was going to create would be used for a Rajinikanth film. 

By now, you would have got half the story. You are wrong. You have got the entire story with the exception of a scene where a young DNA researcher behaves as though she has just come walking out of the villain’s den to honey-trap the scientist-hero, who by the way spends as much time in the lab as Karan Johar spends putting governance-related questions to his guests on Koffee With Karan.  

Our hero is ultra-talented and can conjure up miracle cures provided someone close to him dies of sickness. Until then, he won’t be motivated enough to abandon romantic acts with a lecturer in a college run by his family (ostensibly, philanthropy runs in his family). Something that can be charitably described as research takes place and all scientists in the lab come running to him in joy, saying, “It is positive. It is positive”. Even my Complete Blood Picture report took longer in real life, I felt. 

A blast scene comes in handy to parade the film’s entire cast. Out of the blue, a whole joint family appears at the blast site to console a character who is purportedly sobbing. When our hero saves a woman (Geethika) from vandals-cum- rapists- cum- potential murderers, his family members start wooing her as though some Astrologer had told them he will stop giving moral sermons once he gets married. (To be fair, he is not always into sermons. As a scene where he cautions against sharing OTP with unauthorized callers proves, he is sometimes into dishing out cybercrime awareness Ads to his kith and kin) 

The film features the likes of Urvashi Rautela, Suman (his moustache was designed by someone who was told that all pharma company owners in the world look like gangsters from forbidden Bollywood movies), Vivekh, Nasser, Prabhu, Vijayakumar, and Yogi Babu. But none of the actors has got an original scene. Harris Jayaraj’s music is pretty decent. R Velraj’s cinematography is another plus. SS Moorthy’s art direction is respectable. The dance choreographers (Raju Sundaram, Brinda, Dinesh) is better than the stock stunts by Anl Arasu.

Also Read| Vikrant Rona Movie Review: Kiccha Sudeep starrer is an edge-of-seat thriller with amazing visual elements

Check out the trailer of The Legend below: