Today I have a special movie review for you guys out there. I think we’ve all become a bit disillusioned when It comes to movies in general, especially action films. The movie posters and trailers make all sorts of promises and never seem to deliver the things we want to see. Once in a while a movie comes along with little to no fanfare and just by sheer word of mouth surprises the fuck out of you.
The Tournament Is a movie that from the first time I saw the poster I was like” Oh God, another straight to video pile of shit’ but then as I was looking at some of the actors in the movie, I was actually going hmmm. Well my buddy Jay saw before I did and in passing conversation he mentioned It was pretty good and had a lot of extreme violence and didn’t suck. For me that kind of comment coming from him Is an endorsement of a film so I checked It out. Lo and behold people, I bring you the goods on this movie.
The Idea of 30 assassins running rampant in a small town of which the location changes every 7 years appealed to me on so many levels and having Ving Rhames in this movie was icing on the cake for me.
Spoiler Alert:
The movie begins with Ving Rhames bloody and out of bullets. There are only 3 contestants including himself and things gets extremely bloody. He even uses a Bolt gun used to kill cattle to defeat the last contestant by shooting him in the head with It. The result was one hell of a explosion. Nothing short of a splatterfest. Ving Rhames Is crowned the Champion.
The movie jumps ahead to the next Tournament as all of the 30 players are arriving in a small British town. We are introduced to various characters before the Tournament starts. The real introduction to the main characters comes in the form of the announcer for the festivities as he recaps each players odds of winning the contest for the respective gamblers involved for the duration.
As an added incentive each participant apart from being Implanted with a tracking device so that the other participants can all find each other, are given a mere 24 hours to complete the Tournament or die. The one thing they haven’t told the contestants this year is that each tracking device is also equipped with a small explosive powerful enough to kill them.
Things get bloody fast and Kelly Hu amazes in her hard edged portrayal of a hit woman that gives as good as she gets. The first fight involving her character was intense and I was amazed by how good the director and cinematographer made her look. She’s one deadly woman. There is no mercy showb in any of the action sequences. Whenever assassins meet people die and very bloodily. Sometimes they are innocent bystanders but most of the time it’s two hard asses destroying each other.
Make no mistake, Kelly Hu is the star of the movie and it shows in her performance. I was a bit surprised by that. I expected Ving Rhames to have the bigger part and while he does have a large enough role in the film doing a kickass job. Hu however gives the best physical performance in the fight scenes and especially so when she goes hand-to-hand with this Russian Spetsnatz Commando. Holy shit. None of that fake wire bullshit fight choreography, no sir. We’re getting the real deal here.
This movie gets very, very bloody and has nasty vile characters amongst the favorites that vie for the title of the world’s best killer. Heads explode, bodies get blown in half, necks get snapped, fingers get chopped off and the list goes on and on. I was actually surprised by how much carnage was in this film, just because it was a straight to video film.
Ian Somerhalder who plays Miles Slade gives one of the most insane over the top performances that I’ve seen in a long time but in the context of the film it works. Some of the scenes that he’s involved in are so over the top it reminds one a bit of Crank and Crank 2. His character though is nothing short of vile and disturbing. He enjoys dispatching people, dogs or what have you to the Reaper’s waiting arms and doesn’t differentiate.
But please do remember I’m reviewing this for the people that want the violence and carnage. This film to me is nothing short of a hard “R”. If you can’t handle that then don’t watch the movie. The premise is very simple and sometimes each character goes a bit too far with their campaign to win 10 million dollars but if you were an assassin wouldn’t you?
Order The Tournament on Amazon
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