The Tournament is one of the year’s best action movies. Yup, I said it.
It releases on Tuesday, and I’ll have a full review up on the same day, but for now trust me when I say this is one very cool and bloody romp. Unbelievable and highly implausible sure, but filled with fantastic fights, gunplay, and bloody squib-filled bodies. Every seven years thirty of the best assassins in the world descend on a small town where they proceed to fight to the death for a giant cash prize. Each player is surgically embedded with a tracker and given a handheld GPS so they can see the other assassins. The town is wired with closed-circuit cameras, the phone lines are rerouted to prevent pesky interference from law enforcement, and a room filled with wealthy gamblers watches the whole thing on CCTV and places their bets on who will win this year’s contest. It’s Battle Royale meets Smokin’ Aces meets The Running Man and the result is one of the most entertaining and action-packed movies I’ve seen in a while.
The Tournament stars Kelly Hu, Ving Rhames, Scott Adkins, and Robert Carlyle as a priest who finds himself mixed up in the deadly game. The ScottAdkinsFanz Youtube channel has released a fight scene between Mr. Adkins and Hu that takes place in an abandoned church. Be warned though, the end of the clip contains a slight spoiler as to the fate of one of the fighters. And by slight I mean major spoiler…
Pretty cool eh? Yeah yeah, some of you may have difficulty accepting the believability of a fight between Hu and Adkins, but that doesn’t make it any less kick ass. The choreography is fast and impressive, and the camera shots are wide enough to show us what’s happening on a blow by blow basis. It’s a good example of what to expect from the rest of the movie as there are plenty more scenes of fast and brutal fisticuffs courtesy of Hu and Adkins as well as gunfights galore, some parkour antics with Sebastian Foucan (Casino Royale), and a solidly entertaining chase/fight between a semi truck and a double-decker bus.
The Tournament releases Tuesday on DVD and Blu-ray from the Weinstein’s Genius Products. If you’re a fan of action flicks I highly recommend you check this one out soon.
What do you think of the fight scene?
