Legacy of Lies

Scott is a talented action star and has been in many films over the last 20 years, always playing the same type of character, and never seems to improve his acting ability.

Perhaps it's the directors and poor scripts but after a while you realize that it's him. He's just as good as he's ever going to get and that's average and all the movies where he is a lead look the same.

Legacy of Lies seems to have everything you'd need to make such darkish spy thriller. Exotic locations, seriousness, corrupt parties, family ties, desperate circumstances and a McGuffin to run for.

Problem is, even despite having the right components, they forgot to buy the glue. And decided to slap those components together with wet dirt, instead. Which, of course, isn't sufficient.

Most of the movie is about fetching a briefcase with "files" and apparently a nerve agent (gotta put exotic poison name in your movie, right). Why is it of any importance, isn't really clear, aside vague clues shown on TV screens around the movie every now and then.

The dialogues are very short and functional, with little to no drama, so characters only say what they have to say. Basically, as if they're reading plot points off a list, rather than actually having conversations. And attempt at having any drama (musings of mission gone wrong in the past) is so cringeworthy, it'd be better if they didn't do it at all.

Actors are nice to watch. They all feel interesting enough to be a part of something memorable.

Then there's action, the spectacle of the show. And sure, it's plentiful and well-executed. Camera angles work, shots are long enough and so on. But then, there's big ugly thing in the room that ruins it all --

Audio. Every gun sounds muffled. Soundtrack feels like random generic action soundtrack, with no tension and release, never stops and doesn't follow what's happening on the screen even by smallest bit. Which makes it super weird and out of place. Rather than giving rhythm to the action, and slowing down to relax, it just does its own random thing, basically turning everything into weird, incoherent soup. Same for dialogues, for example, they are often muffled or lost in background so you never truly concentrate on them. There's nearly any atmospheric sound whatsoever, cities don't sound like cities, cars don't make sound when they take off, etc. Watching this movie without sound at all would probably result in better experience than watching it drowned into really, really badly designed sound it has. I felt like it ruined entire thing.

Other problem that drags it down is concentrating on action too much. Yes, it's nice, and necessary, but in a spy movie with capital hopping, evading capture and being chased two powerful forces, what do you think is the important or exciting part?

This movie, in extremely blunt and rather dumb manner, skips over every possible bit of TRADECRAFT, characters just magically book flights and hotels under false names, acquire cellphones and weapons, get tracked to the other side of the Europe, all that'd be really interesting see... is cut out. For some reason, scenes of throwing elbows at faces and dreams of a dead woman was more important that the very essence of a spy thriller.

So in the end, you get a movie that had all the ingredients to be good, but ruined itself with extreme incompetence at cooking them.

Folks who make movie trailers-not movies, should get academy awards cause the preview of this film convinced me to buy it; stupid me. It's plot is confusing, the characters are cardboard, the daughter is annoying, the "action scenes " are...yawn inducing. Scott Adkins is handsome and believable in his kick-but skills, I can't say anything else that's positive about this film.

Scott Adkins is back with another DTV Action Thriller & this time he plays an Ex-Spy for the British government who walked away from it all after a secret mission went terrible wrong & we meet him 12 yrs later as a troubled dad with his smart 12 yr old daughter & he works in a swanky club as a bouncer & cage fighting on the side to earn some cash & Adkins is good again in another solid role that shows he's a fine solid actor as well as a fantastic gifted fighter. Legacy of Lies is a basic Spy Action Thriller but actually looks really slick & Cool with nice lighting & smooth, fast fighting scenes that are apart of todays Action genre & mostly it's a pretty good little Thriller. Adkins movie daughter in this is ok'ish, abit annoying sometimes & adds nothing to the film except the motivation for the events he's forced into later when his past catches up with him & we get the usual basic old "Buddies" of his that are still Agents & are all Assholes lol, the Awesome Adkins glides through the low-budget film beating up & shooting everyone & that's fine by me as that's what we expect from Adkins & the Action genre but the film is watchable only once. I think Scott Adkins is way underrated & can & has done way better films.

Adkins is Awesome as usual but it's just a very basic & generic DTV Action Film.

Legacy of Lies attempts to be a tier-1 actioner but it's really a tier-2 or -3 with its cast of inexperienced unknowns. Filmed in parts of Europe, mostly in hollowed-out Ukraine it appears, this is writer/director Adrian Bol's first feature film so he's got a few lessons to learn. Honor Kneafsey plays young teen daughter "Lisa" to "Martin" (the lead) but her character seems wrong for the whole situation, and her throwback Shirley Temple look is really obtuse. Plausibility suffers too when semi-automatic pistols prevail over automatic machine guns, really?! If you do sit through this, please tell me your cost was $0.