The Tournament

I saw this in 2009 n revisited it recently on a DVD which i own. Action fans should definitely check this out. The plot - A group of sadistic gamblers makes wagers on 30 of the world's most deadly assassins who band against one another in a battle royal. Debutante director Scott Mann did a terrific job considering the budget. The action is non stop. There are shoot-outs, gun play, bloodbaths in unlikely venues, severed limbs, exploding bodies caused by booby-trapped tracking devices, plenty of explosions, car chases, kicking, punching, heads exploding off like melons, severed limbs, wild stunts, a bus/truck chase, nudity and gore. Its really a *ucking shame that this film didn't got the recognition it deserves. The star cast is decent, the hot n attractive Kelly Hu (her sex scene from Farmhouse man), Ving Rhames, Robert Carlyle, Liam Cunningham, Scott Adkins n Sebastian Foucon (the guy from Casino royal). There's an excellent free running sequence courtesy of park-our expert Sebastian Foucon.

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

A series of TV news reports are shown about acts of violence across the globe ; gunfights , crossfire , assaults , explosions , terrorist attacks, and other acts of murder, both small and larger scale . In some of these reports, the newscasters say that authorities are dismissing some of the random explosions as accidental. Television is really controlled and a sadistic game show is followed by wealthy people betting amount of dollars and it has become the most popular program . The TV game run by a director (Liam Cunningham) in which various murderers are selected for a ruthless manhunt , as each game is selected some extremely hired killers in the Mysterious event called "The tournament". . It is a game of world's best Assassins killing each other while featured live to its buyers as the world's best Show on earth. Here take part the following ones : Oshua Harlow (Ving Rhames) is a main champion , considered to be Number One , Lai Lai Zhen (Kelly Hu) a sexy high kicking, sharp shooting Chinese woman hoping to win enough money to quit 'the life' and disappear forever , Miles Slade (Ian Somerhalder) an crazy Texan who has entered purely as an excuse to create slaughter , chaos and massacre, a free running killer and Parkour expert , Anton Bogart (Sebastien Foucan) , the nasty villainous Steve Tomko (Craig Conway) who has entered as a test of his own hunter/killer skills , among others . Thousands of people watching the tournament , betting on which one of the 30 assassins will survive the next 24 hours "kill or die" and claim . The last man standing receiving the elevated cash prize and the title of Worlds No 1, which itself carries the legendary million dollar a bullet price tag . Every Seven Years The World's Greatest Assassins Gather ... Only One Will Survive . Death by elimination . Coming soon to a town near you!

This nail-biting film contains action , thrills, suspense , blood , a little bit of black humor and is plenty of graphical violence . Special effects laden flick with ultra-violent events , but being really a loose rendition written by Gary Young & Jonathan Frank & Nick Rown freely based on the Stephen King novel that was adapted on cinema by Paul Michael Glaser as ¨Running Man¨ with Arnold Schwarzenegger , Jim Brown and Yaphet Kotto , the film is based very loosely on the novel of the same name . The story deals with a futuristic TV game show in which men hunt them down and kill them in gruesome manners . The movie displays strong and realistic fights and excellent action sequences with bloody attacks and violent , blistering struggles . The highlights of the film are the enjoyable relationship that's established between the peculiar characters of the priest/Robert Carlyle and the murderess/Kelli Hu, as well as the impressive and unstoppable pursuits-crashes between a double-decker bus and a giant truck. The picture belong to ¨dystopian world¨ genre in which tyrannical states are controlled by cruel death games , such as ¨Running Man¨ (Paul Michael Glaser) , ¨Battle Royale¨ (Kinji Fukasaku) and the recent ¨Hunger Games¨(Gary Ross) . The film is carried out by a varied cast , although it stands out Ving Rhames as a hunk and powerful warrior , he steals the spectacle as one army man , as enemies are dispatched in turn . Along with other important actors , such as : Robert Carlyle, Kelly Hu, Ian Somerhalder, Liam Cunningham, John Lynch , Andy Nyman , Iddo Goldberg , Nick Rowntree , Rachel Grant and special appearance by Scott Adkins proving his fighting skills . Being a United Kingdom/United States/Bahrain co-production here the British cast prevails.

It contains a thrilling and appropriate musical score by Laura Karpman, mostly composed by means of synthesizer . Evocative and adequate , though dark at times, cinematography by Emil Topuzov . This lavishly produced motion picture was well directed by Scott Mann . He's an action expert directing some succesful films with plenty of spectacular set pieces , violence , thrills and twisted intrigues , such as : ¨Fall¨, ¨Heist¨, ¨Down Amongst the Dead¨ , ¨Final Score¨ and this ¨The Tournament¨ . Rating : 6/10.

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.