The Tournament

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

The Tournament - a deadly game played out every 7 years, where the world's richest people put 30 of the world's deadliest assassins in an out of the way town, and bet on who will be the last man (or woman) standing. The surprise (aha( is that through a plot twist, a drunken priest played by Robert Carlyle becomes an unwilling participant. Ving Rhames, Kelly Hu and that dueshbag from LOST round out the character actors.

A movie like this, for me, needs two things - badass characters - and I mean MAKE THEM BADASS! Have a guy who uses snakes as weapons, and has an eyepatch, and uses a boomerang! Have a girl who has poisons and throwing stars, and who killed her whole family when she was 3 years old - I want some bloody history goddammit. Have assassins who get their arms pulled off and still keep killing. What we get here is a stupid video game sequence for each of the top 5 assassins, THE TEXAN, THE FRENCHMAN, THE Asian CHICK, etc, kicking and punching a bit before freezing for the camera. This is not the way to go. Show them in their environment. SHOW us, don't just tell us how badass they are.

The movie has a stupid subplot where Ving Rhames's wife has been killed, and hes there for revenge, blah blah blah, these movies tend to get all cocked up when they try to make an emotional plot work, and this one is no exception. I feel like having this tournament, plus a bystander who's a priest who then becomes one of the players is more than enough plot for an action movie, the rest can be just watching the carnage unfold, and if the characters are interesting, and the action scenes are creative, that's all it really needs. This movie tries to straddle both, and ends up having mediocre characters having mediocre fight scenes (the two fight scenes with the FRENCHMAN were the exceptions, mostly because I'm a sucker for that parkour jumping around stuff).

One last thing - movies like this need to understand the idea of contrasting elements. Contrast these deadly killers against a very normal town! Show them getting coffee at starbucks, fighting in a wal-mart, contrast crazy with normal. Instead the towns people seem to barely exist, the cops are nowhere, you never get that moment where a kid looks at a bleeding murderer from behind a box of paper towels, and the killer goes "hey there buddy" before blowing away a crazy monkey fighter who leaps over the tootsie roll display. This place is the town equivalent of an empty warehouse.

People are comparing it to death race, but I actually liked that better, because it embraced it's stupidity, and didn't try to have that emotional subplot. The Tournament is really a movie best enjoyed after at least four beers, and even then you might find yourself nodding off near the end.

If there is one glorious thing about making movies going in to the second decade of the millennium, it's that someone can have a successful movie, and a pretty good movie, that does not have to have a theater run to gain an audience or make money. There has been plethora of direct to DVD or direct to OnDemand releases that are just as good, or better, or better in a different way, than a lot of wide release movies. Usually the biggest difference between the two are marketability. The main consideration for marketability is the star power of the cast or the filmmakers.

Ving Rhames, one of the stars in the ensemble cast of "The Tournament," is probably the most marketable name associated with the movie. Most people still remember him as Marcellus Wallace from Pulp Fiction, so that right there gives a clue as to the marketability of "the Tournament." That's OK. "The Tournament" should live on in DVD rentals and sales for years to come.

"The Tournament" is ridiculous in its attempt at scripting and plot. The concept and continuity is as (un)developed as a Jason Statham franchise. But the action. Oh, my, the action is dialed to the extreme.

The "plot" is that every seven years the best assassins from all over the word are gathered together in a small town to go at each other in a free ranging field of play until there is one man or woman left standing. This year the action takes place in Middlesborough, a small town in the UK. The advantage of this small town is that it has more closed circuit cameras than any place else in the world. Therefore a team of hackers led by a dude that looks like my friend Spike (of the famous podcast The Paul & Spike Show) can somehow gain control of all of these cameras and bring live feeds of the action to a room full of billionaires from all over the world that are placing bets on the contestants. The group is hosted by Powers (Liam Cunningham), who channels the most campy essence of Richard Dawson from The Running Man .

Included assassins are Joshua Harlow (Rhames), the defending champ who is only back to settle a score; Lai Lai Zhen (Kelly Hu), a killer with a conscience; Miles Slater (Ian Somerhalder) a crazy killer from Texas; and the alcoholic Father Joseph Macavoy (Robert Carlyle) who, through a devious tactic by another assassin, gets pulled into the game against his will.

What develops is a farcical stretch of anyone's credulity, but the action is so fun and violence so over-the-top that a fan of the action genre cannot help but to enjoy the show. The gore level of the violence is nearly on par with Stallone's Rambo and the physical stunts (many actually done by this fun cast) are the high flying craziness of District 13-style.

The finale comes as a bit of a surprise in that it revisits a style similar to action movies of the 80s and 90s. The satisfaction level of the ending is very high.

"The Tournament" is a blast for action fans. The movie is simple with only a hint of a plot that's only purpose is to set up action sequence on top of action sequence. If one starts to deconstruct the plot too much, it is revealed for the silly and contrived object of convenience that it is. So don't. Pop the flick in, grab a pizza and a craft beer, and enjoy the show.

Wow. I was expecting a mediocre executed movie but it turned out to be awesome from the first minute in. I don't know why the movie gets so much negative feedback here.

When you watch the movie it's very clear that the makers were inspired by "Battle Royale" and "Terminator 2". A solid cast: Ving Rhames (always bad-ass), Robert Carlyle, Ian Somerhalder (who does surprisingly well!) and a action-packed small role for Scott Adkins. Guns, gore, boobs and loads of stunts & action!

Highly recommended for action-fans!

7/10

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.