Review Shooter: Legendary

Book smart teenager, Cal Chetley (Devon Graye), joins his Oklahoma high school’s wrestling team as a way to reunite with his estranged brother, Mike (John Cena). His mother, Sharon (Patricia Clarkson), is not initially supportive of Cal’s decision, especially when she discovers that Mike is secretly coaching Cal. She has been estranged from Mike for over 10 years, since the death of the boys’ father, Mac Chetley, a college wrestling legend.

This has unofficially become John Cena week here on Nerds on the Rocks, I don’t know what made me want to check out his movies, but here we are. Legendary is the 3rd film to star John Cena, and probably one of the films with the greatest turnarounds in cinema history as it went from theatre to home release in just a week! I think that may be a record though I may be mistaken.

What We Liked:

• The music. Probably the strongest part of the movie was the musical selection, I thought most of the choices really helped the scenes and overall feel of the movie, and it was enjoyable.
• The performances for the most part were okay, while WWE pimped this as a John Cena movie, the real star is Devon Graye who does a bang up job with what he is given. Granted, I see no awards in his future for this role, but nothing he should be ashamed of.
• The main love interest/best friend is an interesting character, the right mix of quirky and awkward and just trying to fit in. Not sure if they play well off of each other but dug the character.
• The story. Its really nothing new, but they don’t ruin it so that’s a positive. It holds the movie together well.

What We Didn’t Like:

• The “other” characters, Cal’s “best male friend” who literally has two scenes where he speaks and then randomly cheering him on at matches, John Cena’s “girlfriend”, again who has like two spoken scenes and then never seen again, and finally Danny Glover gets to play the magical negro/wise black man, and I literally don’t know if they are spoofing it or taking it serious.
• Some of the scenes are just cringe-worthy, they are meant to be serious and intense, but the actors just go a tad overboard with it.

All in all, I have to say I kind of enjoyed the movie, it won’t ever make my top 10 list for anything, but it was an enjoyable 2 hours or so.

Recommendation: Watch It, its already on Netflix Insta so you don’t have to go out of your way to find it. If you have 2 free hours and want to check out a passable movie, here you are.