The King of Fighters

I've been watching video game adaptations ever since I was little and pretty much have a realistic sense of what to expect in movies like these, i.e., they tend to be less than stellar and deviate severely from the source material. I saw King of Fighters after I saw Tekken, so the latter became my point of comparison and, therefore, wasn't expecting much from the KOF movie. However,KOF just epically sucked.

Based on the credits, there seemed to be so many people involved in this movie and I can't understand how, with all these people, they couldn't come up with a decent movie. The movie had a pretty good A list cast that are all mostly well-experienced and well-respected in the action movie industry, but they all deliver their career worsts in this one movie.

The story was idiotic and the script was pointless. The movie runs at a snail's pace and all the action scenes were bland, at best, because just when you think that it's going to be better, it just disappoints.

I'm usually very forgiving of movies and understanding of their flaws, but this movie was an epic fail. Maggie Q, Will Yun Lee, Ray Park, and Sean Farris should all be ashamed. It looked like they just did this movie to pay the bills. This is a great example of what not to do in a movie, not just for video game adaptations. They'd have been better off making a porno.

There are stronger words starting with "F" that can be substituted for "Fighters" in the title "King of Fighters". A pity "profanities, obscenities and spiteful remarks" are not allowed in reviews. But here is a clue: the "F" word is definitely an insult, just as how Hong Kong Director Gordan Chan's "The King of Fighters" is an insult. Not just an insult to the fans of the King of Fighters (affectionately abbreviated to "KOF") video game series, or video games in general, but it even manages to be an insult to bad video game movies.

On a whole, the setting of the story manages to immediately rip-off "The Matrix" while sounding more confusing than the entire trilogy combined. THe premise of this movie shows A secret tournament that is held in some alternate dimension in which fighters from around the world "log in" to via special earpieces. Think jacking into a big matrix-like video game world, complete with "I-know-kung-fu" wire fighting and badly CGI-ed special powers. Its all fun and games until Rugal (Ray Park doing his best Darth Maul meets The Joker impression) steals some sacred artifacts with a plot to free something called "The Orochi". Why free the orochi? Because Rugal wants to haxors the alternate dimensional video game, become "L33T" and ultimately the god-mode hax winner. Out to stop him are undercover agents Mai, who is working for Terry Bogard in the CIA, and Iori Yagami, a man with a past connection to Rugal. Together they must seek out a third artifact called the "Kusanagi sword" which has been passed from father to son to one Kyo Kusanagi.

To quote Maggie Q's character of Mai by saying "Its not Logical", would be a major understatement. An illogical, confusing and plodding plot is the least of this movie's problems. In trying to mix mysticism with hardcore science fiction would have worked in the hands of a skilled creative team. Here it turned out like oil and water, making the entire movie very difficult to follow and bordering on absurd.

The most basic criteria for a just "passable" video game movie is that either the story has small resemblance to the game (Silent Hill, Max Payne, Hit-man) or the character has some similar appearance to their game counterparts (Mortal Kombat, Tekken). King of Failures has NONE of these mere basic elements! Fine, Resident Evil had neither too, but at least it had a story that was mildly entertaining. King of Failures is an absolute chore to sit through.

The pacing is thrown off by having too much talk and not enough fight. All the talk is not even interesting nor does it develop that silly excuse for a plot. Kyo's so called "hero's journey" has been done in umpteen other shows and every character's lack of charisma is made even more painful by stilted acting and laughable dialogue. At least Ray Park's Rugal was funny in all his weird costumes when he changes the setting of the game to, for example, a hockey match.

When some action does come once in a while, it is an utter let down and a complete joke especially when one knows what kind of awesome action Hong Kong is capable of. The fight choreography is generally uninspired, almost dull. Many B movies have had better fights than this; heck even Legend of Chun Li had some better fight choreography. Ray Park and Will Yun Lee were the only two actors who had some convincing fighting moves (thanks perhaps to their martial arts training). Speaking of "Legend of chun Li", remember that lesbian tease scene? Well King of Failures has its own lesbian tease scene. But the biggest sin here is Gordan Chan's wonky camera-work which uses way too many "dutch angles"(oblique or slanted tilting of the camera while filming) and an irritating purple lighting that seems reminiscent of "Battlefield Earth".

NINE companies collaborated on this project (count it in the "company credits" section) and all they managed to cough up was a 12 million dollar budget for this piece of junk?? How could Gordon Chan, renown director of great films like "Painted Skin" and "Fist of Legend" sink so low? (It pains me personally to see the name of a Singaporean company listed among the production credits). It is as if there is some perverse secret global competition for "crappiest video game movie creators of the century": Hollywood has entered Hyde Park Entertainment and Andrzej Bartkowiak, Germany has Boll K. G. and Uwe Boll, France has Xavier Gens, . And now, CONGRATULATIONS to Asia who has officially added Gordon Chan and all 9 of those production companies (who are mostly also Asian) to vie for the "crappiest video game movie creator" title.

Hand on heart, then I am not a fan of movies based on fighting games, but this one topples all the rest. It pretty much sums up the definition of bad movies.

"The King of Fighters" suffers horribly from an very weak and basically non-existent storyline. And whatever little was there just didn't work. Come on, putting in an ear piece and then press a button and you go to an alternate dimension to fight? Yeah, that was perhaps the most epic fail of the entire movie.

Also, the movie suffered from a lack of acting talents. Surely there were some scenes that were alright, but in general the acting performances in this movie was painful to behold. And also the actors/actresses didn't really have much of a solid dialogue script to work with. And also the characters portrayed in the movie never grasped you, they were shallow and had no personalities, so it was hard to relate to any of them or get any kind of emotion for any of them.

Now, what did work for the movie, was the CGI effects. They were actually adequate enough to look at. I especially liked the regular flame and blue flame effects, they looked cool.

Some of the fighting scenes were good enough to look at, and had just the right amount of speed and action. But most of them actually were strenuous to the eyes and came off as half-hearted, forced attempts of making a fight scene.

I wonder what made Maggie Q agree to participate in a movie like this. Usually her movies are somewhat further up the ladder compared to this movie. If for no other reason, at least her appearance is a treat for the eyes.

There are way too many movie versions of fighting games out there, and 99% of them doesn't translate well to a movie screen. And "The King of Fighters" is one of them. I actually fell asleep and was out for 20 minutes during this movie, it was just that boring. I am sure that the director had the best of intentions at heart, but there is no need to make a movie out of a fighting game that has long gone out of date.

If you are into action movies and movies based on fighting games, "The King of Fighters" should be avoided, you are better off watching something like "Mortal Kombat" instead. This movie is not really worth the effort.

I wasted an hour and a half on this (well more like an hour, as I was out for 20 minutes or so), and this is definitely not a movie that I will be returning to ever again.

If you are a Kof player, do not watch this.

If you are into action/fighting movie, do not watch this.

If you love watching good movie, Do Not Watch This.

I really have no idea why they made such a movie?

Was Dragonball no bad enough?? Have they no learn the mistake??

What is the director or the screen writer thinking?? Iori Yagami looks like a playboy?? Kyo is American Spanish?? (can't really tell what nationality he is, but he sure is not the Kyo we are expecting), maggie Q as Mai? And who is that guy using the 2 sticks? Rugal?? not Mr.Big??? No to mention the other characters, i am really speechless.

This is not X-Men, or Spider Man, or one of those American superhero story, which was successfully turned into movie.

This Is Kof. You simply just can not find a bunch of people, film some really bad fighting scenes, slap a movie together and call it Kof.

Sorry about the complain, but I had to hold my anger for 1 and half hour, just so i can see it to the end, and be sure how hopeless this movie is before i made this post.

I wanted to give this a 0 star rating, but the lowest is 1 so yeah.

It's bad.

Please don't waste your time watching this movie!! Its horrific to see how low budget movie production houses and poor unprofessional directors try to make a movie from a franchise and twist the original characters and story and fan support into a pathetic show of a movie which is nothing but a complete joke.

I mean I was speechless once I was able to finish this movie after keeping myself in the chair in hope that the director would come up with something better. But Alas, it was the same joke again n again.

You could tell at every step of the movie that its a low budget movie with directions so horrible that the actors are stiff, dialogues not in place, the tiny bit of special effects being forwarded to make it faster. Like for gods sake, you couldn't make the Orochi ball into a little bit better display??? If you can't make a good movie, then please don't screw up the original story board and the KOF name.

Anyone with the slightest taste in movies should stay a million miles away from this movie. The whole production house and director should be ashamed of what they have done. Me, a proud fan of KOF, disgusted beyond saying to see this movie.