Tekken

In the future, there won’t be enough fabric left for shirts.

(2010) Martial Arts (Anchor Bay) Jon Foo, Kelly Overton, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Ian Anthony Dale, Cung Lee, Darren Dewitt Henson, Luke Goss, Mircea Monroe, Tamlyn Tomita, Candice Hillebrand, Marian Zapico, Gary Daniels, John Pyper-Ferguson, Roger Huerta, Lateef Crowder, Monica Mal. Directed by Dwight H. Little

When Arcade Games ruled the earth back in the 80s, there was (and continues to be) a subgenre known as the fighting game. Some of these, including Double Dragon and Mortal Kombat lived to become film adaptations and it took almost 20 years but now so does Tekken. That’s not necessarily a good thing.

Jin (Foo) is a young fatherless man living in 2039. World War III has decimated the population of the planet and rendered a good portion of it uninhabited. Corporations rules the world now and have divided the planet amongst themselves (which gives corporations more credit for co–operation than they probably deserve). North America is ruled by the Tekken Corporation, which in turn is ruled by Heihachi Mishima (Tagawa).

When Jin’s mother and martial arts mentor Jun (Tomita) is killed during a crackdown by Tekken’s security forces, known as the Jackhammers, Jin – who as a contraband runner was closer to the insurgents than Jun ever was – discovers in the wreckage of his home a badge identifying his mother as a fighter in the Iron Fist tournament which promises riches and fame for life for the winner. Intrigued, Jin decides to enter.

He finds the Tournament to be a mess of intrigue. Heihachi’s son Kazuya (Dale) who is also his right hand man, is plotting to take over the company from his son and is using the highly popular tournament to do it. Jin finds an ally in Christie Monteiro (Overton) and a mentor in Steve Fox (Goss), a former tournament champion who sponsors new fighters.

He’ll be going up against fighters like Miguel Rojo (Huerta) and Bryan Fury (Daniels) as well as other mainstays of the game. The rules of the game however are changing and growing more deadly. With the stakes higher than they’ve ever been can Jin defeat the powerful forces aligned against him and emerge a fighting champion?

This is a very basic outline of the plot which goes into a lot more detail which really is unfortunate. The game itself as I remember it – I don’t think I’ve played a version of it since the 90s – was very simple and straightforward. Quite frankly I’m not sure that fans of the game are looking for a plot that’s anywhere as near as complicated as this.

What they’re looking for are the fights and those are done pretty well. The filmmakers even incorporated some of the moves from the game which was much appreciated by this ex-player. The style is definitely very similar to the look of the game, although obviously adjusted for the big screen.

There is a pretty goodly amount of CGI but quite a bit of it is surprisingly subpar. At times the footage looks like a 15-20 year old computer game. Considering the size of the budget, it’s incomprehensible why the effects looked so cheesy. If I were the filmmakers, I’d have been suing somebody.

The acting is passable which is about what you’d expect in a videogame adaptation but even for that notoriously underachieving subgenre of movies, this is pretty awful. Why is it that when Hollywood takes a videogame and makes a movie out of it they feel it necessary to dumb it down to the lowest common denominator, or give it little or no support in terms of getting good scripts, good effects and so on. No wonder the makers of such obviously cinematic games as Halo and World of Warcraft have given the thumbs down to letting Hollywood have their hands on the properties they’ve worked so hard and spent so much time and money to develop properly. It shows little or no respect for the videogame audience which is kind of bizarre considering that gamers go to a lot of movies themselves.

WHY RENT THIS: Some nifty fight sequences. Cast gives a game effort.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Really subpar CGI. A mess of a plot.

FAMILY VALUES: Plenty of violence and brutality with a side order of sexuality.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Most of the Iron Fist Tournament fights were staged at the Hirsch Memorial Coliseum at the Louisiana State Fairgrounds in Shreveport, Louisiana.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: There’s an interesting Canadian television documentary on  stuntmen which was largely shot on the set of this film.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $967,369 on a $30M production budget; this was a box office catastrophe.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Mortal Kombat

FINAL RATING: 4/10

NEXT: Lovely, Still

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The Karate Kid (2010)

Jackie Chan explains to Jaden Smith why his forearm isn't as long as the Great Wall of China.

(Columbia) Jackie Chan, Jaden Smith, Taraji P. Henson, Rongguang Yu, Zhenwei Wang, Han Wenwen, Shijia Lu, Luke Carberry. Directed by Harold Zwart

Relocating to a different place, particularly one with a vastly different culture, carries with it inherent feelings of loneliness and isolation. These feelings can be exacerbated if you’re the victim of bullying.

Dre Parker (Smith) has seen his world turned upside down. First, his father dies. Now, his mom (Henson) is being transferred by the auto manufacturer she works for in Detroit to their new plant in Beijing, China. All Dre knows is that he has been ripped away from everything he knows and cares about to live in a strange new place where nobody speaks English, the food is weird and funny, terrible smells waft about at any given moment.

Initially he finds some solace in the violin prodigy Meiying (Wenwen) who actually does speak English, and the lone Western friend Harry (Carberry) that he finds in his apartment complex. However, his relationship with Meiying attracts the attention of Cheng (Wang), the school bully who happens to be the best Kung Fu student in the class of Master Li (Yu), a brutal sort who believes that Kung Fu is meant to be the means not only to victory but complete annihilation.

The beatings that Dre gets from Cheng and his gang become progressively worse until what appears to be the beatdown to end all beatdowns is interrupted by the taciturn handyman Mr. Han (Chan) who as it turns out is a Kung Fu master. At first, Han is reluctant to train Dre but when Han is backed into a corner by Master Li, he agrees to train Dre for the open Kung Fu tournament that is coming up soon.

Dre’s attitude is not the easiest to get along with and both his mom and Mr. Han are frustrated with him but as Dre learns to let go of his preconceptions and find his inner stillness, Dre undergoes a metamorphosis from a scared little boy into a strong, courageous young man.

The movie is based on the 1984 film of the same name, with Chan taking on the Oscar-nominated role that Pat Morita made into an icon, and Smith assuming the mantle left by Ralph Macchio. In many ways, the movie is almost a reverent remake of the first film; while not note-for-note, it certainly captures most of the main highlights of the movie and references them sometimes obliquely but usually in a pretty straightforward manner.

Chan has made a career of being a bit of a clown; while nobody can doubt his martial arts skills, he has always played characters on the light side, with a healthy dose of self-kidding. This is far from those kinds of characters, as Mr. Han has a dark secret that haunts him which gets released with some prodding from Dre. There is a scene in a car midway through the movie which is as impressive as any work that Chan has ever done.

Director Zwart also makes good use of the Chinese landscape, with beautiful vistas of mountains, lakes, as well as magnificent shots of iconic locations like the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. China is a gorgeous country (having seen it firsthand only a month ago), and it is certainly one of the selling points for the film. Da Queen was particularly nostalgic about a scene set in a Beijing hutong, a specific type of alleyway where there are groups of traditional courtyard houses and is one of the most charming aspects of Beijing life.

Jaden Smith, so good in The Pursuit of Happyness is somewhat inconsistent here.  He has some moments that resonate emotionally in a realistic way, and then others that don’t ring as true. Da Queen thought more highly of him than I did; she seems to think he has a very bright future ahead of him and honestly, I don’t see why not either.

Kids seem to like this movie a great deal, and there’s good reason for that. Jaden is pretty appealing in most of the movie and the Kung Fu is pretty spectacular for those who haven’t seen some of the better examples of Chinese martial arts movies. The ending, while predictable, has a nice little twist in a nod to the original film and you’ll definitely leave the theater with a good feeling inside. One can’t fault a movie for accomplishing that alone; those expecting more may wind up disappointed.

REASONS TO GO: Heart-warming in its own way with a particularly strong performance from Chan. Beautiful cinematography of Chinese locations and monuments.

REASONS TO STAY: Smith’s performance is a bit uneven and those who saw the first film are going to feel a sense of déjà vu.

FAMILY VALUES: There are some pretty intense scenes of bullying and violence and a couple of bad words, but all in all most audiences should be okay with it, and it certainly would make a good jumping off point for conversations with the kids about bullying.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The scene of the woman mesmerizing the cobra on the dragon statue while in the crane position is a tribute to the original film, in which Ralph Macchio defeats the Cobra Kai with a move from the crane position.

HOME OR THEATER: Some of the vistas of China are amazing and should be seen in the theater.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW: Blind Date (2009)