The Tournament

hi and hello

Well where do i start, This movie has absolutely no plot, absolutely everything is predictable and half of it impossible or unlikely. for example there was a big fight scene in a nightclub. Various assassins were pulling out guns, shotguns , and machine guns.. (how many nightclub doormen would allow you entry carrying these, I am surprised a rocket launcher was not used as well) the effects and fight scenes are good considering they are over the top, there is a lot of gore also for those of you that love a gorefest. Shame there was not a more interesting script though, this is the major letdown for this movie. It is watchable though, but be prepared that the script was as much use as a chocolate teapot when they made this movie.

I had hopes for this movie, maybe cause I didn't watch a trailer for it but I when I saw the tracker device, the bullet inside them which I instantly thought.. "God, a lame Americanized version of battle royale.." The pros of this movie was that it had a lot of blood and brutal killing and the characters in the movie had all different personalities, like the crazy finger cutting contestant and the parkour guy. Other than that predictable storyline, Guy wants revenge on the person that killed his wife, the person (Lie Lie Zhen) was sent by the Host of the tournament, predictable that she wouldn't have died when her tracker went off. The ending was pretty dud as well, Joshua and the host just blew up and the priest just held a funeral for Lie Lie Zhen (She didn't die)

If I was new to the genre then maybe I could have enjoyed it more. From an action movie you can't expect much. But there is something to be said for quality over quantity. Yes,there was a lot of action. Only the way it was shown it wasn't entertaining at all. Every time when there was a glimpse of excitement the scene stopped. Here you have one of the founders of Parkour,Sebastien Foucan,and we only get to see him for a couple of minutes very limited in his movement. Nowhere near the spectacular chase sequence in Casino Royale or the self made movies that can be seen on you tube. At times i thought that the movie was on the right track not taking matters so seriously,but then it got spoiled since most of the actors did take it too seriously. The gore and violence was funny at moments,but got real tedious further in the movie. And if you are planning to see this movie because of some of the names featuring in it.Don't bother since they seem to be completely lost in this movie.Ving Rhames especially. This got to be his worst performance ever. Skip this movie if you can.

I am no sure what the budget for the film was but obviously the producers are making cuts due to the hard pressed economy. Much of the shots are done in Bulgaria. I imagine it is much cheaper to block off one of the two Bulgarian national highways to shoot the night car/truck/bus chase scene than blocking off Interstate 5 in L.A., for example. Much of the production crew is also Bulgarian which, I imagine, helps create jobs in the small Balkan country. Besides this trivia, I gave the flick 3 because it joins the adamant insistence of people in the movie-making business that action films will please the audience only if they are gory, unnecessarily gory, and add more gore on top of that. Language. The F-amous and F-abulous F word is well exploited to beef up the dialog. Nothing new. Also, I wonder when are they going to start using the name of Buddha as a curse word in those Hollywood and quasi-Hollywood productions!? No surprises in this respect, too. If the script was not so blandly predictable and setting us up for the "gore experience" I could have given the film a 5 star rating. The chases are well filmed, the acting is reasonably good and there is a level of surprise in the ending. Surprise, that is, if you did not pay attention during the movie. The blowing up of humans and the rest of the violence actually take away from enjoying the fast pace of the film, if flying body parts are not in your taste for action entertainment. Not surprisingly character development is also imperfect, shall we say? The Lai Lai Zhen character represents the ever present noble chick, turned bad, because bad people made her do it. She is one of the top assassins, and believe it or not, ends up having a heart of gold - inappropriate take compared with the rest of the intentions of the movie-makers and the tone of the movie. Joshua Harlow (Ving Rhames), the #1 world assassin also has a soft, tender heart. When he is not murdering, blowing up and hacking people he is a family man. The attempt at drama within and after the massive massacre was absolutely corny. They should have stuck with the senseless killings. Stay with what you're good at.

...this just about takes the biscuit as one of the worst possible films ever made! What on earth was Robert Carlysle thinking of when he agreed to be in this tosh? 5 minutes into the film and as the 'tournament' is being described by the dark brown voiced head of betting you begin to wonder if it can get any worse...it does. Take away the 'action' and choreography..oh and the buckets of blood gore fest on view and you are left with a poorly acted, poorly scripted mish mash of a film that offers no character development whatsoever. There is no one at all in the film that the viewer can like..maybe the Asian bird, but not for her acting ability...the 2 characters in the film that the director wants the viewer to emphasise with, Robert Carlyles priest and Vin Rhames 'legend' are pathetic, one a drink sodden fallen priest and the other the present incumbent of the title 'Assasin Of The Year' (yes...I know..it really is that bad and at that pre pubescent puerile level)who is desperately seeking the killer of his wife......the words 'sherlock,sh1t and no' spring instantly to mind as halfway through the film we, the viewer can suss out who was responsible...... The final climactic scene (sic) where Rhames..mortally wounded..hams his way excruciatingly through dialogue possibly written by the proverbial 100 chimps with typewriters as he confronts the killer of his wife (who cares) is more than risible. All in all a clonker of a film..unless you are a 12 year old child who likes pulling the wings off of flies and enjoys as much blood, gore guts and B/S as you can fit into a 'film'. one word summary: KERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAP.

There has been so much trash released over the past couple of years, however The Tournament is one of those fun trashy movies that hits the action spot very nicely, what we have is a game that takes place every 7 years and 30 top assassins play out for the top prize, and yes they have to kill each other to win 10 million, a bug has been placed inside them so they can track each other down and a bunch of rich folk place there bets in who will win.. Well thats pretty much the plot.. So what now follows is a Battle Royal kill fest, and boy do we have some brutal and bloody kills, the film makers were smart to even through in some nudity...and hey presto we have another trashy exploitation movie, but this one kinda rocks, it will remind you of other movies you have seen...like Battle Royal, The Running Man, and even Gamer, so don't expect anything original but there are some nice set pieces, blood gets splattered all over the place and oh... did i even mention that there is some nudity?

When I saw the trailer for this film I immediately thought The Tournemnt had potential to be one of best action films of the last years, unfortunately that's not the case. The premise is very interesting even if flawed; every seven years somewhere in the planet(usually in a random city) a tournament between the world's deadliest assassins takes place. 30 assassins fight against each other in a bloody battle royale hoping to survive. The last one standing wins the tournament and receives a cash prize and more importantly the title of world nº1 assassin. This is obviously a receipt for lots of action,fighting,blood,death and so on... But as much as I love the concept, the movie felt short of my expectations...there are a couple of well done fighting scenes but overall the action in the film is not nearly as spectacular as the trailer led me to believe, it's just not impressive at all considering other action films that have been done before, and the few twists in the story are very easily predictable. The acting was average, while Ian Somerholder and others did a good job, Ving Rhames, for instance, was constantly over-acting. The tournament could have been amazing,instead it is a forgettable movie with a few more or less known actors that doesn't deliver what it promised. 5.5/10

So there is a tournament every 7 years where the worlds best assassins fight to their death, and the winner wins 10 mio dollar. Each assassin gets an implant and a locating device so they can find each other. The tournaments takes place in a normal city, where the mess that is made will be blamed on terrorists and madmen to keep the tournament a secret. It is a premise with lots of potential for a fun movie. What breaks this movie is the bad character development; you know who are going to be be the finalists from the start, but just just hope that they will be killed off because there are no reasons to like them. Still the movie has so great action that makes it relatively enjoyable. There are some brutal kills (e.g. people exploding with meat all over) and some fun fights (e.g. strip club). But it has all been seen much better in movies as The Condemned, Battle Royal, Death Race and The Running Man.

When I decided to check out "The Tournament" the expectations were moderate. Actually I expected it to be a pleasant DTV title with a couple of cool actors. What I got instead was a thrilling actioner that surpasses most of the theatrical releases of the same genre. The action is hyperkinetic and violent, and Scott Mann has undisputed Hollywood potential. The plot about the assassin tournament is clean and simple, a lot like "Taken" and when it comes to comparison between these two films, only advantage for "Taken" is Liam Neeson. "The Tournament" provides solid acting but it doen't have such a potent star. Actually, if we consider its budget, "The Tournament" is really outstanding in terms of casting because it combines available theatrical-feature actors like Kelly Hu, Liam Cunningham,, Robert Carlyle and Ving Rhames with top DTV names like Scott Adkins. Scott Adkins' potential was obvious ever since he first appeared in Isaac Florentine films and in "the Tournament" he is accompanied by Sebastien Foucan, the parkourist we remember from "Casino Royale". Fight scenes are marvelously staged, with great fight choreography, but also outstanding gunplay and vehicle stunts. When it comes to the sheer amount of action "The Tournament" gives you the most for bang for the buck. It is very hard to invent some new kinds of action set-pieces and choreographies but in a couple of scenes "Rhe Tournament" does that. Also, you must bear in mind that action is very violent and gory. The sheer amount of gore is comparable to Neill Blomkamp's "District 9". Bloodletting is stylish and lavish and Scott Mann really has the guts (quite literally) to pull it off. I am surprised that this film failed to get theatrical release. I mean, it's quite obvious that American distributors wouldn't release because none of the stars are a draw in the US but I guess it should've worked quite well internationally. Writer Gary Young was lucky to move on into theatrical business with Matthew Vaughn production "Harry Brown". I hope Scott Mann will accomplish the same.