Review: 'Tron: Legacy' is tedious

Film: Tron: Legacy (3D) (U/A)
Cast: Jeff bridges, Garett Hedlund, Olivis Wilde, Bruce Boxleitner, Michael Sheen
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Rating:  * *

It took almost 28 years for this sequel to take shape and the result though visually masterful, doesn’t really bear testimony to the long and eager wait.

Tron: Legacy  is  a digitised hi-tech adventure with 3D intrusions, basically taking off from where the original let off.

It's been 25 years since Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) disappeared and his now grown-up, tech-savvy, 27 year old son, Sam Flynn (Garett Hedlund), who has all but forsaken his father's creation Encom, belatedly decides to look into his father's disappearance and inadvertently finds himself drawn into a violent and glassy cyber universe of fierce programs and gladiatorial games where his father appears to have been trapped for years.

Along with Kevin's loyal confidant Quorra (Olivia Wilde) father and son embark on an audacious mission to quell the digital despot Clu (a much younger and digitised version of Jeff Bridges) who has ambitions of ruling the real world too.

Technologically speaking, this film is several notches above the original but in terms of narrative significance this one falls short. The initial reintroduction to the story and it's characters, is remarkable efficient.

It's the additional bit that begins to go haywire. We, along with Sam are thrust into this incredible and imaginative world that would indeed have been a joy to visit if only it did not look so unreal.

The story goes through the motions, a sort of play by numbers, good versus evil duel subsisting on stunningly choreographed action and glossy visual appeal. It's all action and little else of substance.

The 1982 released original at least had a believable story to tell. This one looks too fantastic to be believable. The motivations of the characters are never clear.

The dialogues instead of shedding light on the tech heavy story only ends up sounding incomprehensible.

Clu's obsession with power and his eagerness to conquer new worlds wh ile eliminating all who stand against him, appears hackneyed and terribly cliched.

Tron, the titular character is barely seen through the run-time of the film, his face is never revealed and if you havn't seen the original you might begin to feel that his elusive existence here was too insignificant to warrant this multi-mlillion dollar exercise. Even Quorra and Zuse (Michael Sheen) appear to be there just to fill up the gaps on screen.

The confrontations play out on expected and predictable lines and it's only the new fangled digitised 3D effects which make this effort halfway watchable.

Thirty minutes into the movie the sheen from sparkly clean surfaces, sequential lighting and geometrically choreographed action begins to wear thin as everything appears repetitive and the tedium thereof becomes just a little too hard to bear!