A Legend Movie Review: Not Quite Legendary

Stanley Tong’s A Legend wastes superstar Jackie Chan in a dual role that sadly involves the use of deepfake and A.I. technology.

Unfortunately, A Legend doesn’t really work either as an action epic or as a fun or light adventure, making use of terrible digital effects and deepfake techniques in order to de-age superstar Jackie Chan and turn him into a warrior of olden times.

Chan stars as archaeologist and researcher Professor Fang, who can’t stop daydreaming about the Han dynasty era and especially about what one can assume is his ancestor: the military general Zhao Zhan (also played by Chan). In actuality, most of the film focuses on this earlier timeline, centring both on Zhan and his soldier companion, Hua Jun (Zhang Yixing), who at the beginning of the film rescue Princess Mengyun (Gulnezer Bextiyar) from the Huns. It’s from there that A Legend takes us on an adventure that involves them, their Hun adversaries, and a Jade medallion that serves as the MacGuffin that connects both timelines.

The idea behind A Legend is not without merit: to tell an epic story that involves two different generations of people and spans quite a bit of time. Unfortunately, Tong (who also wrote the script) doesn’t do a very good job of connecting the two timelines, utilising the medallion as the object of importance that compels both sets of protagonists to move the plot forward, but nothing else. The way A Legend moves from one timeline to another isn’t particularly compelling, using rather cheap-looking transitions at times, and extending certain scenes for too long, which only ends up boring the viewer.

In fact, that might be A Legend’s main problem: it’s surprisingly tedious. Especially considering it’s supposed to be a historic and fantastical epic, the film doesn’t really manage to be all that exciting. The pacing is all over the place, there are too many sections that end up being surprisingly talky, and the film in general feels much longer than it is. You know it’s not a good sign when a movie starts feeling tiresome at the twenty-minute mark, when there’s still more than an hour and a half of story to go. Due to its editing style and lazy intercutting between timelines, A Legend feels like a lethargic experience, lacking energy and pizzazz.

Which is something I wasn’t expecting to be saying about a Jackie Chan vehicle, and yet here we are. I know the martial arts superstar is seventy years old and can’t be as agile and do as many risky stunts as before, but that doesn’t mean he should keep appearing in this sort of disappointing fare. And it’s not like he’s incapable of fighting nowadays; even though most of the sword fighting is done by his Deepfake body double, he does get involved in a proper bout during the film’s climax… and it’s exciting! Fun! And pretty much the only moment that reminded me of Chan’s glory days of Hong Kong cinema.

Now, let’s talk about the Elephant in the Room, or rather, the Soulless Robot in the Movie. For some reason, Tong decided that about seventy per cent of A Legend should involve an actor with Chan’s de-aged visage pasted onto his face. The end result doesn’t only belong in the uncanny valley; it was probably its sole founder and governor. This kind of technique can kinda-sorta work when used sparingly; even Disney used it only for the prologue of its fifth Indiana Jones entry, and even though it’s probably the best it’s ever looked, some fans weren’t happy about it. So imagine taking that, making it with less money and resources and time, and using it for a protagonist during the majority of a two-hour film. It’s an insane decision, which results in a character that doesn’t look or feel human.

It’s a pity, because if A Legend had focused on Professor Fang and his friends, using those flashbacks to the Han dynasty era only sparingly, the entire experience would have been much more pleasant, and probably even more exciting. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend A Legend based on what I saw. Chan is great as always (well, at least his real-life, seventy-year-old version) and the film’s premise doesn’t lack potential. Moreover, there are some interesting visuals and a couple of well-choreographed sword fights. But all this is ruined by the uneven pacing, a distinct lack of energy, the use of shoddy CGI, and most gravely, a disturbingly de-aged Jackie Chan who wouldn’t look out of place in a PlayStation 3 videogame. What should have been legendary, sadly, ends up being disappointingly boring.

A Legend will be released on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital Platforms in the US on January 21, 2025.

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