Review of Tekken (2010) by Saadieq D — 10 Aug 2010

Yet another horrible video game to movie tie-in. I don't know what I expected, maybe it's because I loved the mystical characters of the Namco game. maybe I have a morbid fascination with seeing how badly hollywood can f**k up something that has already been laid out for them.

For fans of kung fu action flicks, this has all the stereotypes, 'you killed my -----' whatever, and plenty of bone crunching fighting, weapons, and the obligatory cheesy lines, and thin story.

For fans of the Tekken video games, they will notice a lack of mistique and wasted opportunities to have the monsters and super human powers have been missed. None of the characters have been really fleshed out, the big daddy of the game Heiach Mishima isn't menacing at all, nina isn't sexy, Yoshimitsu isn't supernatural, and Jack (a terminator type character in the game lore) has been totally replaced as an army of gun wielding ninja soldiers, called 'The jacks'.

The film takes place in only two locations, the grubby oppressed streets, and the neon oppressed fighting ring at the Tekken competition. It's kind of 'Mortal Kombat' meets 'Robot Wars' in feel, and its very dark through out.

Oh, and Luke Goss gets the worst dialougue in the film. I suppose I should end the review on a high note, The costumes and hair in this movie are incredibly stylish (espescially the main character) and the main baddy, Kazuya Mishima comes on very evil towards the end of the film.

I suppose that if you aren't looking for decent scripting, a juicy story and you like stephen segal films still, then you may want to take a look. The best fighting video game to movie adaptation to date, but thats not saying much.