Legacy of Lies Parent Guide

Martin Baxter (Scott Adkins) got out of the international espionage business after a catastrophic mission in Kiev twelve years ago. Now, Martin lives in London with his daughter Lisa (Honor Kneafsey), fighting in underground bare-knuckle matches and working as a bouncer at night to make ends meet. But when Sacha (Yuliia Sobol) walks into the club on night, she brings Martin’s past with her. Now confronted with the failure of his last operation, Martin risks falling back into the dangerous web of secret agencies he thought he left behind. The last straw comes when the Russian kidnap Lisa to force Martin to secure information from Sacha, pitting Martin against his own former agency and the CIA in a race to save his daughter…

If that sounds messy, it’s because it is. The story isn’t really the focus; it’s just the increasingly banal glue that sticks the big action set pieces together. And, in all fairness, the movie is well aware of that. The emphasis is very much on the fighting, but there isn’t quite enough of it to keep the pacing moving along, so the movie has a tendency to drag. None of that is helped by the stale-dated Cold-War action/spy movie dialogue, which feels like it was filtered through Google Translate at least once before making it to the script.

Once you actually get to the action, it’s well done. Scott Adkins, the star of the picture, came up as a stunt performer and has worked on several big action flicks – thankfully, it shows. The choreography is designed to highlight the ability of the stunt performers, giving them nice long takes to give story and shape to the fights. It isn’t quite on the level of something like John Wick, but it’s miles better than some productions I could name with similar budgets.

Sadly, despite being perfect for the hormonally lobotomized audience that is teenage boys, the film has too much profanity for parents to be terribly comfortable with this as a sleepover movie. There is also a sex scene which sneaks out of nowhere like a mad flasher – and then lingers for about five minutes. Say what you will about flashers, but they typically have the good sense to scram afterwards. The screenwriter must have just really wanted to get some female nudity into the film, presumably to pep up the non-action scenes. It just comes across as awkward, much like the rest of the film. Poor writing, tonal inconsistencies, and serious pacing problems leave Legacy of Lies with far more problems than benefits. If you’re willing to skip around between the fight scenes, you might come up with twenty minutes of good entertainment. I just wouldn’t be willing to spend money for those twenty minutes alone.