Legacy of Lies (2020)

This one has been in the can for a long time, so I decided to finally make it happen. Of course I realized I've just put out an Adkins podcast, so it's like an Adkins-palooza here at the DTVC this week. In addition to us, our friends at Bulletproof, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have covered this as well. 

Legacy of Lies isn't a scandalous biopic about a celebrity chef--think "Lagasse of Lies" for that--but instead has Adkins in a common story construct for him: former special forces guy, raising a child on his own, when said child is kidnapped and he's forced to come out of retirement. The details here involve a daughter, the Russians, a Ukrainian journalist, and a MacGuffin of sorts. Will Adkins put the pieces together in time to save his daughter and take the baddies down?

That might be the shortest synopsis I've ever written, but how many times have we seen this construct with him? In addition to this, I have Abduction, Seized, and Eliminators. It feels like we're talking Seagal "former CIA agent comes out retirement" territory, but at least Adkins doesn't mail in the action in this, which helps. On the other hand, the 101-minute runtime doesn't do it any favors, as we're working on a well-worn plot device, and it would help to move it along since we pretty much know where we're headed. I think if you're behind on your Adkins--which is easy to do with how many he has come out at a time--leave this one until you've done some others first.

This is now 21 Adkins films on the site, but the first since November, so like Dolph there's been a bit of a break since we've covered one of his. I have 6 or 7 watched as well, so we could get him close to the 30 Club pretty soon. This was one of five films he had come out on 2020, and now we've reviewed four of them. (The fifth, Dead Reckoning, I haven't seen yet, but haven't heard great things either so I may leave it for a bit.) Out of the four I've done, I don't even know how I'd rank them. Seized uses the same plot construct as this, replacing the daughter for a son, and the Russians with Mexican cartels; Max Cloud was unique, but didn't execute the video game thing as well as I'd have liked; and then Debt Collectors was a fun Jesse V. Johnson sequel, but may have been better as a 43-minute episode of a Debt Collectors syndicated TV show. Where does that leave us with him, as he's probably the most exciting, dynamic DTV action star in the business right now? We can't expect everything to be Avengement, but I do think there may also be a law of diminishing returns with him too. He was forced to slow down due to Covid, so he only had two films come out in 2021, and I liked both more than anything he had come out in 2020. Maybe less is more in this case.

Speaking of "legacy," as Adkins starts to get more and more films under his belt, he'll start to pass some of the bigger DTV names in terms of all-time status. My top five is Dolph, Williamson, Rothrock and Wilson (tied for third), and Daniels. He's got some work to do to crack that group, but after that I have Seagal, Lamas, Dudikoff,Van Damme, and Dacascos, with Michael Jai White at 11th. This is where Adkins is starting to move, and while 2020 was more quantity over quality, it looks like 2021 is the reverse, and I think the two together a DTV action star makes. There has to be the quantity to make your way into the 30, then 40 and 50 Clubs; but also the quality all-time bangers that we can point to to show you're one of the greats. The other issue he runs into is, a lot of these other names above him aren't done yet, despite being in some cases 15-20 years older than him. It'd be like Barry Bonds moving up the home run list, only to have Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron come back and hit more. After a couple solid ones in 2021 though, I'm excited to see what Adkins has next.

There seems to be two ways to get the former special forces guy out of retirement: kidnap his child, or find him in some seedy, out of the way bar, and convince him without coercion. We can see why Seagal always opts for the latter: he never wants to be seen in light where he's not in control; but why Adkins is always doing the former is more puzzling. Doesn't he look at a script and say "I've done this before, in fact I did this already this year!" Adkins definitely brings a lot more action than Seagal, he's not mailing these in and looking for a paycheck; but by the same token, I think it would be more fun to see him in the Seagal scenario. Adkins as "Jonathan Cold," former MI6, called back into action while holed up in some dive in rural Thailand to stop any one of Vinnie Jones, Florin Piersic, or Ving Rhames, teaming up with Byron Mann and one or two women in black leather, but no Cajun accent and no mailing in the action. Just give me 10 of those and pump them directly into my veins--okay, maybe five, and just air them for me to watch on Tubi.

Finally, one thing I appreciated about this film is they didn't make Adkins affect an American accent. Maybe I'm biased as an American, and I don't think Adkins does a bad American accent, but I just prefer him as an Englishman. I've noticed Isaac Florentine seems to be the biggest offender of this, as he's either using an American accent, or a Russian accent in the Boyka films. Fellow Englishman Gary Daniels never does this, he always has his natural accent, and it always works. No matter what, the action is the most important thing, and Adkins always brings that; but the accent matters too. Come on Scott, do it for the children.

And with that, let's wrap this up. While this was on Tubi, it's now on Netflix, but that could change with the way Netflix dumps its movies. If you've seen a lot of the great Adkins films already, this is worth a look, especially if you're already paying for Netflix; if not, I'd get to some of those other ones first.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6834916

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!