They Spent $30 Million On This??? A Tekken (2010) Review

Film Score: ⭐

Released by Anchor Bay

Release Date: July 19th, 2011

Starring: Jon Foo, Kelly Overton, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa

Written by Alan B. McElroy

Directed by Dwight H. Little

Rated R (violence and brutal fighting throughout, and for some sexual content)

Tekken has finally made the long journey to the big screen and let me tell you that they should have waited longer. This is a movie that is so devoid of anything resembling entertainment that I started to feel bad for the people who are in it. This movie is one of the worst video game adaptations ever made. I would say that it is a tad bit better than Double Dragon and is worse than Street Fighter.

The movie gets the names right. Some of our favorite characters such as Yoshimistu and Bryan Fury are present, but they are given almost nothing to do. In fact, Yoshimitsu has exactly one scene, where he fights our hero Jin. We think that he is killed, but they say later that it was a ruse. Does he make a comeback at the end of the movie to help our hero? Nope. He is forgotten about after they tell us he is still alive. Why would the filmmakers do this? Yoshimitsu is one of the most beloved characters in the game and he is written off after a very unspectacular fight.

The first of the movie's problems lies in the screenplay. This movie is so badly written that every line that the characters say is a cliche. There is not one original thought throughout this entire movie. In fact, this movie is a rip off of Mortal Kombat, which itself is a rip off of Enter the Dragon. So we have a rip off of a rip off. That is the most impressive thing this movie does.

The movie takes place in the future, which I don't think the games did. The future here looks like a mix of the Mario Brothers live action movie and that movie Cyborg with Van Damme. The first part of the movie takes place in one of those futuristic shanty towns. You know, the ones where the lead character has to steal something that is futuristic, in this case some type of hard drive, to get something that humanity has forgotten about, in this case an orange and coffee.

Why don't these guys ask for a higher price when stealing this stuff? I guess it is to show that we don't really know what we have until it is gone. This idea actually seems to smart for this movie.

The main attraction of a movie like this are the fight scenes. Its really too bad that none of the fight scenes last for more than two minutes and are so over directed that we barely can tell what is going on. Instead of being fast paced and exciting, the fight scenes fall victim to the age old American way of showing a fight scene: Slow and with very few punches or kicks thrown.

The movie was directed by Dwight Little, or Dwight H. Little as he is sometimes credited. He has made some pretty good movies, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, and he has made some bad ones, Anacondas. He worked with Brandon Lee on Rapid Fire so you would think that he would have a little more respect for the genre. I have liked a lot of Little's movies and I hope that he can bounce back from the huge backlash this movie is going to receive.

One final note: How come American filmmakers can not make a good martial arts movie? I know that there are exceptions to this, but by and large Americans are horrible at making martial arts movies. Is it because martial arts are not our invention? You would think that after all of the kick ass martial arts movies that Americans would stop being trapped by these phony martial arts movies. You talk to any fan and they will list Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan or Jet Li movies as the best, and yet we are still given shit like Tekken and all of the direct to video titles that appear every month.

The guys who made the two sequels to Undisputed have it right. But their movies are sent directly to video. Is that the fate of a real martial arts movie? Being sent to video? If it is then that is a shame.