In 'Legendary,' a torn clan finds healing through sport

"LEGENDARY" IS A wrestling movie that features John Cena, but the World Wrestling Entertainment star does almost no wrestling.

The most ardent hold is the one he puts on Patricia Clarkson, who plays his mother, a woman battling a lifetime of jagged regret, emanating from an auto accident that claimed her husband but spared her oldest boy Mike (Cena), a star high school wrestler coached by his father.

They never sorted through the issues of guilt, blame and shame the tragedy created, sending Mike into a spiral of alcoholism and violence, and leaving the family asunder.

The job of putting it back together is taken up by her younger son Cal (Devon Graye), a spindly, nerdy high school junior who one day abruptly announces that he's going to take up wrestling. He does this as a means of reconnecting with his estranged brother, hiring him as a trainer behind his mother's back.

The story is told from Cal's point of view and strikes a decent balance between his progress as a wrestler and his appealingly selfless mission to use wrestling as a means to reunite his family.

As a wrestler, Graye is not very convincing. He looks athletically overmatched, and slight even by the standards of the 135-pound class. I doubt he could beat Jack Black's tag team partner in "Nacho Libre."

But he handles the emotional scenes nicely, and has great rapport with Clarkson, who takes up more of the narrative load as the story unfolds, and really anchors the movie. She even crafts a few nice moments with Cena, a huge granite chunk of a guy trying his first nonaction role. He's OK, though it would help if the biceps, rather than the eyes, were a window to the soul. And there is something comical about the way the movie tries to integrate Cena's massively muscled torso into its chosen atmosphere of casual realism. He looks like something out of "Transformers."

Produced by Mike Pavone, Dave Calloway, directed by Mel Damski, written by John Posey, distributed by Samuel Goldwyn Films.