The Legend Movie Review: Legend Saravanan’s vanity project is commercial cinema at its dullest

The Legend Movie Synopsis: A scientist is spurred by the death of his friend to find a cure for diabetes, but can he take on the might of the pharma mafia and succeed in his mission?

The Legend Movie Review: With The Legend, JD-Jery borrow director Shankar’s playbook for his 2007-blockbuster Sivaji and give us a film based on the privileged-saviour-hero and five-songs-six-fights formula of the commercial cinema of that time — one that had become dated even by the end of that decade. Seeing it play out on the big screen after 15 years only gives us a sense of ennui as every scenario they come up with feels dull, unimaginative and totally predictable. Give yourself a pat on the back if you don’t doze off at some point.

The story revolves around Dr Saravanan (Legend Saravanan), an apparently world-renowned scientist who has revolutionised the antibiotics field, who chooses to work from his village for the sake of his people. Spurred by the death of his diabetic friend (Robo Shankar), he decides to invent a cure for the disease. But this spells bad news for the pharma mafia, which has already suffered a lot because of Saravanan’s earlier research, which enabled people to find out if they required an antibiotic test. So, their Indian operatives (Suman, Rahul Dev, et al) decide to sabotage Saravanan’s research, even causing him a very personal loss. Can the scientist find it in himself to go ahead with his research and succeed in his endeavour?

The hype around The Legend is solely because of its leading man, the entrepreneur Saravanan, who has chosen to become a movie star. To his credit, Saravanan does everything required of a hero — he fights, romances the leading ladies, shakes his leg, spouts punch dialogues (“Enakku padhavi mukkiyam illanga.. Makkal dhaan mukkiyum”) and acts emotional. Sadly, he does all these without moving a single facial muscle (the fact that he is caked in makeup in every single shot only makes it worse), and all we register is a performance that is as vacuous as the film itself.

It doesn’t help that the rest of the performances, too, are far from convincing. Geethika and Urvashi Rautela seem pretty out of place while senior actors like Nasser, Prabhu, Vijayakumar, Devadarshini, Sachu and Thambi Ramaiah seem to be just cashing in a hefty pay cheque. Yogi Babu is hardly funny while the late Vivekh deserved a better final film. But everyone is always dressed to the nines, like they are being part of a commercial for Saravanan’s clothing store.

The one thing that JD-Jery get right is in glossing their product to hide its two major shortcomings — writing and lead performances. The film is mounted on a scale that reminds us of big-star movies from the 2000s, and even the plastic visual tone (R Velraj is the cinematographer), and the grand but unaffecting score (by Harris Jayaraj) are from that time. Alas, if only had they spent some of the money that they have splashed on the needless songs and stunts for the writing! The film could have at least been somewhat interesting if it had been intended as a spoof or as a commentary on the creative bankruptcy of most of our mass movies, but sadly, the film is as straight-faced as they come. With such bad writing, forget a wannabe like Saravanan, even a bona fide superstar like Rajinikanth wouldn’t have managed to save this vanity project.