Tekken (2011)

There are Street Fighter fans, there are Mortal Kombat fans, there are probably still some Virtua Fighter fans and there are Tekken fans. When I was growing up I mastered Mortal Kombat. I loved it, there were some great characters, I'd enabled the D,U,L,L,A,R,D cheat to get the blood and gore switched on and I'd mastered all of the fatalities. The fancy button combinations required for the Street Fighter games had never been to my liking. Then, during those exciting Playstations years, I discovered Tekken 2. A perfect combination, it had all the fun of Mortal Kombat and a similiar, but slightly easier, button-combo system to Street Fighter.

With so many great characters and so many different fighting styles, a movie should have been easy to get right. Well, this is here to prove us all wrong.

Tekken isn't awful - it's slick and polished and at least keeps things lively enough throughout - but it's just lacking in almost every way. The characters aren't as memorable as they should be, the fights aren't very exciting (any featuring the main character tend to follow the same pattern - he gets a beating, remembers a lesson from his mother and then is able to turn the tables and win) and it's not even as pleasing as the movie versions of Mortal Kombat (hey, I liked it) or Street Fighter (which some fans enjoyed).

Jon Foo plays the main character, Jin, who enters a fighting competition as a way to embarrass the Tekken Corporation and strike a mighty blow for the common people. He has no personality, or charisma, but viewers are stuck with him. Thankfully, Kelly Overton plays Christie Monteiro and looks lovely doing so, even if the camera shows the crack of her backside too many times, while Candice Hillebrand and Marian Zapico play the gorgeous Nina and Anna Williams, respectively. Luke Goss turns up as Steve Fox, the man who opts to guide Jin through the tournament, and Gary Daniels looks the part as big bad Bryan Fury. The main villain of the piece is Kazuya Mishima (Ian Anthony Dale), son of Heihachi Mishima (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) and the man who becomes obsessed with destroying Jin at all costs.

Director Dwight H. Little, working from a screenplay by Alan B. McElroy, just fumbles what should have been an easy piece of lowbrow entertainment. Limited screen-time for the likes of Yoshimitsu and Eddy Gordo (Lateef Crowder) give a small taste of how good this could have been, with the RIGHT characters all given screen-time and one or two special moves given their due.

As it is, undemanding viewers will be able to stick this on and enjoy some fun with a couple of beers and some unhealthy snacks. It's that kind of movie, not that there's anything wrong with that (TM - Seinfeld). It just could have been that kind of movie while also being much more enjoyable. A missed opportunity.

4/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tekken-Blu-ray/dp/B002VD5RZW/ref=sr_1_3?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1357945141&sr=1-3

Mercenary For Justice (2006)

You know this kind of movie, you've seen it a number of times before. A bunch of people (this time they're led by Buddha Christ Theresa himself, Steven Seagal) have to do a job for someone they don't really want to work for. It's a dirty business that they're in and rules get broken while blood gets shed. But remember this one thing, these are the good guys - even when they have to do some lawbreaking. That's the basic outline of Mercenary For Justice, another in a long line of Seagal stinkers that ended up being available on the bargain shelves of your local movie rental emporium. Sadly, you don't actually care about anyone onscreen and that's why this film just doesn't work even half as well as the many that it attempts to copy.

Director Don E. FauntLeRoy returns to traumatise audiences with horribly lazy and shambolic work, this time using a script by Steve Collins and a whole host of uncredited folk (including, unsurprisingly enough, Seagal himself), and he makes something even worse than Today You Die but keeps things moving briskly enough to keep just ahead of the very worst films that have featured his wooden star.

The cast are a real mixed bag. Seagal is as he always is. Luke Goss does surprisingly well with a standard "baddie" role. Jacqueline Lord is okay, Roger Guenveur Smith does his very best to eradicate the goodwill gained by his small role in Final Destination (the last thing I remember him from though he has quite an extensive filmography), Michael Kenneth Williams almost gets out of the whole thing with his dignity intact and Adrian Galley is on hand to be big and full of muscle - job done.

The action isn't all that great but the standard fakery and one-upmanship that this kind of movie utilises is present and correct. It's all quite predictable and very easy to follow but it does help keep things mildly entertaining as things move from a frantic and unbelievable beginning to a frantic and unbelievable finale. Seagal fans still have nothing here to reward their long-term support of the man but at least this isn't one of his very worst.

4/10.

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