Review: Tekken

Set in Tekken City, in the corporate-run future where the Iron Fist tournament is held featuring the best fighters from each rival corporation/sector. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa plays Heihachi Mishima, creator of Iron Fist, with Ian Anthony Dale as his son Kazuya. When young Jin (Jon Foo) steals Tekken equipment for a band of rebels, Kazuya retaliates by killing Jin’s mother (who trained him in martial arts, by the way). Jin, hoping for a chance at revenge, signs up for a free slot in Iron Fist. Meanwhile, Kazuya seeks to usurp his father’s control and chooses the Iron Fist tournament as his opportunity, whilst also making sure that Jin (whom he quickly recognises) has no hope of winning the tournament. Luke Goss plays a former Tekken contestant who acts as manager for Jin. Gary Daniels plays current Tekken champ (and all-round badass) Brian Fury, whilst other competitors include Christie Monteiro (Kelly Overton), Raven (Darren Dewitt Henson), Nina and Anna Williams (Candice Hillerbrand and Marian Zapico) Marshall Law (Cung Lee), and Eddy Gordo (Lateef Crowder).

There’s no secret that Hollywood has done a shit job of translating computer games into movies. You can argue as to which few have come closest to being worthwhile, and for me that would be “Resident Evil”, which was formulaic but watchable, and “DOA: Dead on Arrival”, which was at least amusing. But the majority of the rest are either mediocre (“Mortal Kombat”, “BloodRayne”, “House of the Dead 2”) or flagrantly terrible (“Street Fighter”, “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li”, “House of the Dead”, “In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale”, “Doom”, and “Super Mario Bros” to name but a few). This 2010 adaptation of the popular fighting game, directed by journeyman Dwight Little (“Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid”, “Rapid Fire”, “Marked for Death”) and scripted by Alan B. McElroy (“Rapid Fire”, “Wrong Turn”, “The Marine”) is definitely in the blandly mediocre category. It is, however, probably the best of the adaptations of the ‘big four’ fighting games (“Mortal Kombat”, “Double Dragon”, and “Street Fighter” being the others. I’ve not played the game itself, so I can’t comment on that, but for the most part, this isn’t terrible.

What the film has over most of the others is that although it has a similarly goofy futuristic/mystic bent, it’s better-written and more interesting than any of the others. Well, slightly anyway. It offers an interestingly ugly worldview early on, kind of a mixture of post-apocalyptic and Chinatown (a bit like “Blade Runner”, perhaps but less mopey), and I was glad that an otherwise tournament-based film at least took the time to give us a bit of a story and a bit of a vision. I also liked that the protagonist’s origins were pretty damn mature and traumatic, though I have no idea if the game featured such material.

Once we get to the tournament, however, that’s when things start to disappoint. There are too few fights, especially considering they are supposed to be to the death, and we have way too many characters still alive for too long. After a while, you feel like most of the characters have just been abandoned, and overall it seems truncated to the point of retardation, to be honest. The fight scenes, when we get them, are mostly fine, but after “Ong-Bak”, “Undisputed II”, and “Undisputed III”, I feel like I’ve already been spoiled. The action is better than in any previous adaptation of a fighting game, and more brutal, but there’s just not enough. There’s also way too many MMA takedowns. In “Undisputed II”, it makes sense, but were there a lot of MMA takedowns in the “Tekken” game? I’m betting on ‘no’. The other problem I have is that some characters in my view ought to have lasted longer than others. Capoeira exponent and stuntman Lateef Crowder is terrific as Eddy Gordo, but he’s the first one to be eliminated. In a tournament that also features women. Who fight in outfits that show their arse crack. It just didn’t seem right to me. Darren Dewitt Henson and his Simon Phoenix hairdo aren’t bad, but not good enough to be going over Eddy Gordo, one of the more memorable characters from the game (to the point where even I knew who Crowder was playing before hearing the character’s name despite having never played it). Gary Daniels, meanwhile, looks good for his age and seems to be in fine physical shape, but to me he’s always been one of the least interesting martial arts action movie stars of all-time, and thus I had no interest watching him whatsoever. He’s good in the fights, but once again, I wanted to see more Crowder. I also had no interest whatsoever in watching the women ‘fighters’ act like they had a snowball’s chance in hell against the male fighters in this. I’m not sexist, I’m talking about these specific women against these specific men. They would never get past the first round, save for luck of the draw. Every time they appeared in a fight, it took me out of the moment. The talented, but typecast Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (seemingly a pre-requisite for any martial arts tournament movie based on a video game) does his best, but is wasted in a rather uninteresting, figurehead role. He’s also saddled with the worst wig you’ll likely ever see (It’s like Mr. Miyagi on a bad hair day). As his son, Ian Anthony Dale looks nothing like Tagawa, and is pretty dull as the lead villain, almost a villain by reputation only. That still makes him better than Raul Julia and Neal McDonough in the “Street Fighter” films, though. The best performance comes from former boy band member Luke Goss, as Foo’s trainer, but the role is pretty crap, unfortunately. Lead actor Jon Foo was far more memorable opposite Tony Jaa in “The Protector” than he is in the lead role here. He also can’t act a lick. He might be young and hot enough to be a star of some sort, but I doubt he’ll end up much of an actor.

It’s competent, but there was enough potential for more that it ends up frustrating and disappointing. It’s one of the best of these fighting video game films, merely by default, really. Now if Crowder was in the film more...

Rating: C