Skip to main content

DTV Madness: THE TOURNAMENT!!!!!

I don't know if it's a good or bad thing but today I watched Public Enemies, a film by Michael Mann with the likes of Johnny Depp and Christian Bale and later I watched The Tournament, a DTV lower budget action movie. For whatever reason, I enjoyed the latter more. I guess it appealed more to my primal sensibilities. Although The Tournament was produced on a low budget, it was still a higher low budget movie than your usual fare.

I think this movie is as close to an American version of Battle Royale that we're going to get. Basically every 7 years there's a tournament held by all the big wigs and high rollers that pit 30 different killers together in a last man standing battle. The winner is awarded $10 million dollars. The tournament lasts 24 hours and at that time, if there is no winner, then a tracking device lodged inside their bodies would explode, killing them in the process (just like Battle Royale!).

There's all sorts of wacky killers in this movie, from your straight up martial arts experts, to gun toting muscle men and even a parkour enthusiast. Amongst all these ruffians is a priest, who is not a killer, but gets tangled in this mess of a tournament by drinking the wrong cup of coffee (I kid you not, how awesome is that). Aside from that, the movie is a top to bottom action spectacular. The style of action is definitely a throwback to that 80s style of action. The exploding bodies and heads were much appreciated by this author. There's also an awesome montage scene in the middle of the movie as a fast forward way of cutting down the ranks of those still alive in the tournament.

I have no doubt that if this movie were released in the 80s during the action movie boom period, that it would have done bonkers at the box office. It's unfortunate that the standards for theatrical run movies have changed so much that movies like this wouldn't stand a chance.

Also, don't let the generic movie title fool you, there are actually some mainstream celebrities in this movie including Ving Rhames (Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within), Robert Carlyle (28 Weeks Later) and the foxy yet somehow aged 41, Kelly Hu (Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan). Rhames does a great job of playing a heartless Terminator-like killer while Carlyle does a great job as the sympathetic priest. Hu, probably the weakest of the three, is great when she's fighting, but in speaking parts, they make her use this fake-assed chinese accent when speaking english and it is purely dreadful (note: she is not pure Chinese).

If you watched Spike TV the past 2 weeks or so then you probably saw TV spots for this movie. It's nice that movies like this get some sort of advertising so that they don't completely disappear into the ether of the Blockbuster Video shelves.

This movie comes highly recommended if you want some mindless action! Until next time, later geeks!



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mark Waid's IRREDEEMABLE (Issues #1-7)

(Note: be warned that this review is on the spoiler heavy side, so read at your own discretion if you don't want the story spoiled.) Since I was a teenager, I always had this dream that I would become a quirky movie director and I'd make a bunch of crappy little horror movies to start with, but that my first big movie would be this anti-superhero movie. I dreamed up of an Apocalypse Now -like movie using existing Marvel superheroes where Captain America would go mad, slaughtering the innocent and go into hiding somewhere 'up the river'. There would be a detective like character (possibly superhero) that would be after him, interviewing his former teammates to find out what made the all-American hero go mad. Imagine my surprise when I started reading Irredeemable . Although not exactly the story in my dreams, it's pretty close. I started reading the series this past weekend upon the glowing review that those geeks over at iFanboy put up a few weeks ago. As far a
Post a Comment
Read more

DTV Madness: Jack Brooks - M.S. and Gingerdead Man 2

Okay, honestly, I think this will be the last DTV post for a while. One man can only take so much shit. I'm only human, I have feelings too. These two movies pushed my limit. I'm going to be in DTV-detox for the next month or so. Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer I thought that with a title like this, it couldn't fail. I thought that with a poster like they had, it couldn't fail. Then I realized something... I failed. I failed in thinking that this movie had any hope. I was expecting some fun horror, mixed with comedy in sort of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer kind of fashion with a bumbling hero and smart quips. I mean, with a title like Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer , was I wrong in expecting a variety of monsters get slayed as the title suggests? It didn't help much that the monsters looked uber cheesy. They looked like something right out of a Power Rangers episode. But to their credit, at least they stuck with practical make-up and effects rather than CG. The mo
6 comments
Read more

Finally, the Xbox 360!!

So as I mentioned in a previous post, I received an Xbox 360 for Christmas from my dad. A great present it was! I've had 3 weeks to enjoy it so I guess I can give you my impressions of it now. First the controller. In truth, I haven't felt a controller this comfortable in my gaming life before. As a child who grew up on the 8-bit generation, with just a directional pad and 2 buttons, there was quite a learning curve getting used to using two analog sticks at the same time. You might say, "Hey Lam, how bout the PS2? You have that machine, and that has analog sticks". True, but of the twenty or so games I have for that, all of them used either only 1 analog stick, or allowed the option to switch on to the directional pad. Using 2 sticks at the same time was at first just uncomfortable. This made for all sorts of trouble as I was playing Gears of War . Luckily for me, I had computer controlled teammates that watched my back. I love the Media Center capabilities
6 comments
Read more