did a theme night, watched a double feature of
The King of Fighters and
Tekken. Did I regret it? Read on.
The King of Fighters is a weird freaking movie. It has a plot that's bizzarly abstract and weirdly faithful to the video game series that spawned it. Its a Chinese/Japanese/Canadian production that takes the worst elements of each countries film industry and neglects the strengths. Among the cast is actors who can ably fight(Maggie Q, Bernice Liu, Will Yun Lee), martial artists who can't act (Ray Park), and pretty people who can't do either and then puts them all on the same level of crap due to shit editing, script, and shaky cam. Its a special effects movie with terrible effects, a fight movie with mediaocre fights, its a tripping-balls-strange story and plot with as much bad acting as any other video game adaptation (yes, really).
Its a failure of entertainment, of the basic rules of cinema, of cinematography, even of costume design (so much aggresively ugly clothing). Its a terrible, very crappy movie, but at least it strikes the bad movie chord that can make shit films entertaining, but it only does so sporadically. I can't recommend this to anyone, its a strong contender for the worst video game movie yet. And yes, that includes the Uwe Boll overue, which are at least more fun to watch.
1/5
After the mind-melting awfulness of The King of Fighters, the much more conventional mediocirty of
Tekken seemed like manna from heaven. There's actually some good production values and technically competent action scenes affixed to the standard issue plot of revenge because you killed my master/mother. The plot and setting are generic, but amazingly the film kinda works as the dramatic universe it inhabits is at least consistent. Its also about the most accurate video game representation ever seen on film, and in a bigger surprise it doesn't look completely ridicoulous. I'll say that again, Yoshimitsu is in this movie and its not a goof, it actually sorta works.
Actually the fights/stuntwork are a noticalble cut above most Hollywood films. This is about as good as any white-people-fighting action as has been around for quite some time. Watching this after the grossley inept King of Fighters made it look even better. Congratulations guy who directed Free Willy 2, you just outdid the dude who directed Fist of Legend!
But being competent isn't the same as being good, the script is still goofy and generic, there's loads of bad dialog (take a shot everytime somebody says "The People's Choice", you'll be bombed before the film ends), and you while you can't take anything here too seriously, it should at least be more fun this piece of product turns out to be. Note the use of the word product and not movie.
2.5/5and speaking lately of unambigiously good movies, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's
Seance is really fugging good.
"
I Fucking Rock."
