Showing posts with label the tourament. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the tourament. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Top 5 Action Movies of 2010

Ahh, the first list of many to come for yours truly, the jaded viewer. Actually, this is a Top 5 Action Movies I SAW in 2010. I can already hear I left out this movie and that movie. So I just had to clarify. This is all solid mainstreamy flicks that were filled with alpha male artillery shells and explosions galore.

And one that had me toppling over....seriously for real (pun so intended).

Click on the title to read my full review. Well on to the list!


5.) The Tournament

The moment I saw the premise of The Tournament I was like this is an awesome idea. Throw in the poor town that has to hold a tournament of the world's best assassins and you got all hell breaks loose.

Starring Ving Rhames, Kelly Hu and other familiars you'll be rocking and rolling through this mish mosh of guns and sniping and car chases.

The assassins just don't kill each other, they fuck each other up beyond recognition. In this new age of action flicks (as Rambo illustrated beautifully) it's not just capping yr ass, it's obliterating the enemy.

The Tournament is an apex in action porn, where guns are blazing, body counts are mounting and parkour and martial arts are needed to win and be called the greatest assassin ever.



The Expendables was the most hyped up action movie of the year. The Big Three was suppose to turn every alpha male action fan into drooling idiots.

The movie wasn't perfect but it showed we can check the egos and put an all star cast of action heroes and still make a good action flick.

I mean the plot is a little contrived and Stallone a little slow but Jason Statham steals the show and is probably the air apparent of the action movie (umm he's not in any Disney movies that I know of)

Seeing Jet Li and Dolph and Stone Cold and Terry Crews reminded me of the original Predators. Just massive huge men kicking and annihilating entire countries.

Good times.


3.) Machete

They say Danny Trejo has played a killer in 62 movies. He's played a rapist in 25 movies. And he's played a killer who is a rapist in 19 movies. Talk about being typecast.

But that's all over now for Danny Trejo. He is Machete and boy can he fuck up people badly as a good guy as he does a bad guy. Machete is mega-tastic and hits on all cylinders. As a grindhouse/exploitation film, as an action film and as a comedy. It even works as Skinemax!

It's bar none one of the best movies this year. Full of the Times Square grindyness I adore it has so many WTF moments you can't help but fuckin applaud. Robert Rodriguez takes the Tarantino formula into exteeeminess, pure of adrenaline knife slaughter, side Jessica Alba boobage and a stoned out Lindsay Lohan.

I will never think of intestines the same way again.


2.) Inception

Inception is probably the best movie of the summer blockbusters. It's made like a bajillion dollars already and the critics are dry humping this movie.

Sure not your traditional "action movie" but it did have your standard heist plot colored in within dreams. Car chases, shootouts and mind tripping layers and you got an action cinema for the mind.

It's a thinking man's movie filled with ideas and layers and more layers. But at its core, Inception is original and different. So many movies these days are remakes, sequels or stories from other mediums.

Christopher Nolan wrote the story over 8 years or so and though it draws from what's been done before, it's cleverly unique. Don't call it The Matrix meets something.
I hate when critics do that.


1.) Kick-Ass

This is one of the best movies of 2010.

Kick Ass kicks so much fuckin ass, I wanted to put on some spandex, fight crime and spew witty vulgarities with my 11 yr old female cousin dressed as Hit Girl. Which brings us to why Kick Ass is awesome-tastic.

It's not the titular character that blows you away (though he does have his hilarious moments) but it's Hit Girl, the potty mouth pre-pubescent tween daughter of Big Daddy (Nic Cage doing his best Adam West impersonation) that steals the show. Chloe Moretz is so fantastic as Hit Girl you sincerely believe she loves ice cream sundaes and switchblades and can assassinate an army of mafiosos with a blink of an eye.

Never has a little girl been so lethal with guns, yo yo string MacGyver devices and a blade.

Kick-Ass turned the superhero genre upside down and had fun doing it. You won't see anything like it again...until Kick-Ass 2.

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I only saw a handful of action movies this year. I did miss a few. So let me know what was your favorite action movie of 2010.



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Friday, January 15, 2010

The Tournament (Review)

The Tournament

The Tournament (2009)

Directed by Scott Mann

I hyped up this movie a year ago and when the trailer came out, I hyped it up some more. So when I won this film shockingly from Fangoria I couldn't believe my luck. I dig a good horror movie, but over the top action flicks are where I get my kicks from.

The movie has a clever premise (see below) and had an all star cast and the trailer had shit blowing up, could it live up to the hype?

Fuck yeah it did.

The assassins just don't kill each other, they fuck each other up beyond recognition. In this new age of action flicks (as Rambo illustrated beautifully) it's not just capping yr ass, it's obliterating the enemy. The Tournament is an apex in action porn, where guns are blazing, body counts are mounting and parkour and martial arts are needed to win and be called the greatest assassin ever.

Boring Plot-O-Matic

Every 7 years in an unsuspecting town (this time its some town in the UK), The Tournament takes place. A battle royale between 30 of the world’s deadliest assassins. The last man standing receiving the $10,000,000 cash prize and the title of Worlds No 1 (which itself carries the legendary million dollar a bullet price tag). The Tournament is set up by a group of sick high stake billionaires who watch the mayhem unfold via CCTV and bet on its outcome.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

I love how I don't have to talk about plot at all in this flick.

Let's look at our players shall we? Here are the notables. Place your bets on who you think will win!
  • Joshua Harlow (Ving Rhames): Reigning champion he's as bad as Marsellus Wallace and cold blooded as they come. His wife's been killed and he's looking for revenge.
  • Lai Lai Zheng (Kelly Hu): Lethal assassin from Asia. She doesn't kill the innocents but has her own motivations to win the tourney.
  • Miles Slade (Ian Somerhalder): Ruthless Texan who is as fucked up as they come. He'll kill women, children and a dog and his shotgun is his weapon of choice
  • Anton Bogart (Sebastien Foucan): Frenchmen whose got awesome Parkour skills (Foucan invented the damn thing) and he can double gun shoot with the best of em.
  • Yuri Petrov (Scott Adkins): Demolition expert and all around badass.
  • Father Joseph MacAvoy (Robert Carlyle): Father Joe gets pulled into the tourney after swallowing a tracking device designed for the assassins. Also he's a drunk and not a very good priest.
  • 25 other assassins that die in an awesome montage
The action scenes are top notch. I mean when a cow airgun is used to blow somebody's head off in the first 5 minutes, I got hooked. And we don't see no off screen BS. Nope, we see Scanners like head explosion. Good times.

The other scenes are pure unfortunate timing kills that are set up cleverly. Hu's Zheng is pure, stereotypical kung fu treachery as she anihilates the other opponents. Foucan's Bogart is a joy to watch as in one scene he parkours after Zheng whose driving a police car with Father Joe in tow. But probably the bloodiest and sickest of all the scenes is when half a dozen or so of the assassins converge at a titty bar and all hell breaks loose.

The surprise here is Somerhalder's Slade who is utterly evil. He didn't just kill the other assassins but murders a bunch of innocent bystanders and some lovely well figured strippers. Look at what the Island did to him! A pure gun battle that was an outright orgy of unrelenting violence. Sliced arms, fingers and decaps. All over the top, slightly cartoony and Grand Theft auto bloody. If you don't like the video game violence, go play some Wii.

With the assassins all having 24 hours to kill each other before their tracking devices turn them into human grenades, we see some good matchups of our notables. Zheng vs Bogart, Zheng vs Petrov, Zheng vs Slade and Zheng vs Harlow. Inserted is also a montage of assassin on assassin violence so we can get the count to 2.

As this all happens, Powers is the man who orchestrates this tournament so a group of diverse rich guys can bet on the action. Some subplot is thrown in with something about Powers and Harlow but it really isn't important.

What you should know is this. The Tournament is zany, double barrel funness with never ending action. Sure there's some conversations, but that's like set up to get to the action scenes. In its 90 minutes, it lives up to its premise of what would happen when 30 assassins destroy a small little town. If you've played Call of Duty, MWF2 or Grand Theft Auto multi player you know what to expect. I've never seen a movie where video game violence is excellently captured in a film.

Well now I have.

I placed my bets on Zheng because I actually met Kelly Hu at a Chiller convention in Jersey. She was really nice and signed my cover of Maxim. Plus she was super hot. Did I win? Her odds were 25:1. Harlow's was 2:1. What do you think?

Gore-ipedia

Head explosions
Body explosions
Shotgun blast carnage
Finger decaps
Hand decaps
Bullet wound carnage
All sorts of assassin on assassin violence

Nude-ipedia

Is this the flick we see Kelly Hu naked? Nope sorry, these aren't the boobs your looking for.
Stripper boobage

WTF moment

Miles Slade's last stand

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

I thoroughly enjoyed The Tournament. It's a movie where you don't have to think, you gasp in awe of the awesome carnage and you commend a movie that takes a clever premise and takes it to the extreme. It's action porn at its finest. I am so happy to see a film that went no holds barred and jacked it up. My only gripes were the Father Joe storyline (where he's an innocent caught up in the chaos), Rhames being Rhames and the ending. It's a little convoluted at times where they could have cut out some of this waste.

But all in all, a solid flick and you won't be disappointed. Here's hoping we don't have to wait 7 years for another Tournament to take place.

Rating:

Check out the trailer below.



Tuesday, August 18, 2009

The Tournament (Official Full Trailer)

I posted a test trailer for The Tournament in May, 2008. It's been removed obviously by now but it looked fuckin awesome. So it's odd that over a year later, we finally get to see the official trailer for this seemingly awesome action fest.

So what all the hype-o-palooza all about?

Here's the plot.

Every 7 years in an unsuspecting town, The Tournament takes place. A battle royale between 30 of the world’s deadliest assassins. The last man standing receiving the $10,000,000 cash prize and the title of Worlds No 1 (which itself carries the legendary million dollar a bullet price tag). The Tournament is set up by a group of sick high stake billionaires who watch the mayhem unfold via CCTV and bet on its outcome.

We're not talking no name actors here. It's some top notch A list mofo's as your fucked up assassins.

Ian Somerhalder, Kelly Hu,Robert Carlyle, Scott Adkins, Ving Rhames ...

Thanks to Twitch, the final official trailer is now online. Check it out below.





Check out the official site for some stills and other goodies. The movie is to be released sometime this year.

It looks like non stop action with a demented twist. Like Surviving the Game with pros. Or Thirst but with assassins. The UK are actionmeisters when it comes to this shit so hopefully this will get a theatrical release.

Thoughts?

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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

The Tournament (Trailer)

It's like the Kumite but with guns!

The plot has me salivating....

Every ten years in an unsuspecting town, The Tournament takes place. A battle royale between 40 of the world’s deadliest assassins. The last man standing receiving the $10,000,000 cash prize and the title of Worlds No 1, which itself carries the legendary million dollar a bullet price tag. All fights are monitored 24 hrs a day on redirected CCTV cameras and broadcast secretly to a ring of high stake billionaire gamblers.

Movie stars some big names:

Ian Somerhalder , Kelly Hu ,Robert Carlyle , Scott Adkins , Ving Rhames ...

Check out the trailer, IMDB and the official site!







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