A family man is harassed by a drug cartel. The leader of the drug cartel is certain that the family man is his son, and he won’t back down. Time to fight and protect the family.
Lokesh Kanagaraj is my favorite Indian movie director since he feels different and maybe a little familiar with how he makes and shoots his movies. With Leo, he took me back to the 80s-90s, where the script sucks, and the movie relies heavily on the action scenes.
In Leo, we follow a family man who lives a peaceful life together with his wife and two kids. But after an incident at his cafe, his face is all over the news, and a leader of a drug cartel who sees his face in the newspaper is certain that the family man is his long-lost son. So he travels to the town where the family man lives and starts harassing him and his family. He wants the family man to admit that he’s his son. So is the family man his son or not? And what happened in their past, if he’s the madman’s son?
I have watched all of the director’s movies, and Leo is his weakest movie so far in his career. I love his energy, I love his playfulness, and I love the scores/soundtracks in his movies.
Leo takes you back in time with a poor script and simple characters. The cinematography and the score/soundtrack are the best parts of the movie, and that’s it. Leo doesn’t have anything new to tell, and the opening sequence is pure garbage when the protagonist tries to capture a hyena. That sequence is way too long, and it’s just stupid. Yeah, we see that the protagonist is a kind man who has a heart that beats for animals and his family, but it’s so cheesy and not exciting.
The most important thing in an action movie is the action scenes, and also the action scenes and choreography disappoint. There is a lot of fighting in the movie, but the scenes lack creativity, and the choreography feels too much alike. There is almost no variation here, and the action sequences are way too long. It’s better to cut the action scenes in half and put a smile on the faces of action fans who want to have some high points during the fighting. There isn’t a single short action scene I can remember from the movie that made me smile and nod my head. That’s not good enough. It was the music that made me smile, combined with some cheesy scenes.
The worst sequence in the movie is the motorbike-car chase. Holy moly, why in God’s name did they choose to do it that way? They should have toned it down and used practical effects. It looks like rotten fish, and it will take you out of the whole movie as you try to find a bucket you can puke in because of the embarrassment. It’s so bad!
I see that the director has made some Indian movie lovers angry because the director lacks creativity in many of his movies and he borrows too much from other movies. For me, Leo feels like “Master” gone wrong. I could easily see many movies the director has drawn his inspiration from in Leo, and that doesn’t bother me at all. As long as I am having fun, I don’t care, and nor shouldn’t you. The Home Alone sequence in Leo is the highlight of the movie. It’s so stupid and fun! It’s like Home Alone mixed together with Rambo: Last Blood.
Leo has a poor script and poorly written characters. It’s a B-movie from the early 90s that Steven Seagal would have starred in. And it’s way too long with this script. The runtime should have been a tight 100-minute movie, not a single minute longer.