CoolGuyJ84 Reviews

Tekken: Bloodline (2022)

Best adaptation of Tekken

[10/10 · 19 August 2022]

Finally, after years of terrible adaptations, Tekken finally gets it right and puts out a worthy adaptation.

Characters showcasing moves from the games, and even events which happened in Tekken 1 & 2 are explained reasonably well (that even people new to Tekken would understand).

Being one of those (several) people who used to play Tekken 3 almost religiously back in the day, I have to say I'm very happy with this first season.

The season also gets to the point and doesn't feel too dragged out.

Tekken (2010)

Could have been better, but it's not that bad.

[6/10 · 7 August 2010]

I just finished watching it - and it's not that bad. Of course, it's nowhere as good VG adaptation as Mortal Kombat 1995 (fighting game) or Silent Hill (if thinking about all Vg movies in general), but it's better than Dragonball Evolution, Street Fighter, SF: Legend of Chun Li, and DOA: Dead or Alive.

In terms of faithfulness, it's not really to my liking as a Tekken games fan, that they changed much of the story around - but I'm not too surprised since it's being done to a lot of VG movies, such as Resident Evil films, and the Hit-man movie which just borrowed elements from the games (such as "Heihachi Mishima is Dead" quote from Tekken 5, Devil Gene vaguely implied with the quote "Curse of the Mishima Bloodline"

Fights were pretty entertaining, though I wish they would have shown the actual fighting styles that match with the actual styles stated (for example, in the movie, it states Raven does Ninjitsu and Dragunov does Sambo, but they're not using those styles at all), Heihachi's fighting action was way too limited (interrupting Jin's fight with Yoshimitsu to save Jin and that's it), and Anna didn't fight at all in the tournament, she does attack Jin in the darkness with her sister Nina, but it's very short and hard to see cause they fight in the dark. Also,final fight between Jin and Kazuya was very disappointing - I was very let down by how short and how weak they made Kazuya (he slashes a worn out Jin on the chest, but when Kazuya himself who isn't even worn out gets slashed by his own axe in a little cut, it's game over? Jesus.

One of the highlights of the film would be Ian Anthony Dale's acting as Kazuya (some people may be more familiar with his role as Scorpion in MK: Rebirth). He did surprising well in this role, and I could see his as Scorpion in a upcoming MK film (though I don't want it to be Rebirth).

There are some corny lines (such as Eddy's "come on boy!") and some really annoying moments (such as those two punks cheering on Jin on his final fights, they were as annoying to me as those hackers from the Transformers movie. Also, Christie's so-called romance with Jin really didn't convince me either, though I do have to admit Overton is very hot).

Anyway, I relatively enjoyed the movie (like when I watched Resident Evil films and Hit-man film), but I guess I owe it partly due to setting my expectations pretty low before watching - and it keeps me thinking could they have done a better job with bigger budget? And if the director and his team were someone like Joey Ansah and his crew for SF Legacy short film, what would it be like?

Mortal Kombat (1995)

Best Video game adaptation along with Silent Hill

[7/10 · 3 April 2010]

I remember when I first watched this film, I was about 10 years old. Now into my mid-twenties, I had a chance to watch the film again, and it is still very enjoyable.

What Video game adaptations seem to be doing wrong these days (especially fighting game/manga adaptations like DOA, SF: Legend of Chun Li, and Dragonball Evolution) is that much much respect is given to its source material - often the story is twisted some other way or the actors' acting is just hilariously bad.

This movie got most of the factors right in making a good video game adaptation:

1. Sticking to the story. This film, while directly taking the story ofMK1, incorporates the elements of MK2, and it works great. The viewer goes through on a journey into the tournament with the hero Liu Kang, as he battles several fighters such as Subzero, Reptile, ShangTsung and other unknowns. Sticking to the story of the first game is one of the biggest credits I would give to this movie. Sure the director did make some liberties (such as Scorpion and Subzero on the same side, Johnny Cage fighting Goro when in game Liu Kang defeated him etc), but the overall flow of the story still remains intact.

2. Fighting is top-notch. The fights are also the highlights of this movie. In movies such as Dragonball Evolution or Legend of Chun Li, we were treated with almost no fight at all, or even if there were fights, they were below expected quality (poor). The best fights that I would pick are Johnny Cage vs Scorpion and Liu Kang vs Reptile. Other fights were okay, except I was maybe disappointed a bit with Liu Kang vs Subzero, and Liu Kang vs ShangTsung, cause I wanted those fights to be longer, and could have been choreographed better to be more epic. Another point to add to the fighting is that we see various special abilities of the characters such as Scorpion's spear with the taunt "Get over here!", Subzero's ice beam, Shang Tsung's soul drain, Liu Kang's bicycle kick etc. It just makes me reminiscence about the games.

3. Acting is passable. Acting is done great from Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa,he has done many villain roles in many films, but the most memorable character he played (till now) is still his ShangTsung from the MK film. Other characters' acting is passable - though I could have wished for some characters to not use cheesy lines or one-liners, but heck, this is a video game film after all, and those lines weren't that bad.

The only thing which pulls this movie from being great is that cgi is a bit dated now (its been released 15 years ago!), but considering the advancement in cg technology, it is understandable.

Many people still consider this film to be one of the best video game film adaptations, and I definitely agree (even with its cg setbacks/cheesy lines/some fights which could have been improved).

It stands the test of time pretty well - sure it's no Oscar material, but it sets out to deliver what fans really want and whole lot more). It's such a shame that the sequel annihilation was so horrible that it took 13 years to reboot the franchise(with upcoming MK film by Warners, that is if they can get past this legal dispute with Threshold)

However, the first MK film still comes on top as best video game adaptation along with Silent Hill film.*

*I guess this will be tested by the new Prince of Persia film, Tekken film, King of Fighters film coming out - whether these films would be better adaptations than the first MK film

Ninja (2009)

Scott Adkins' Ninja: a very good movie with couple of flaws

[6/10 · 26 November 2009]

After getting Ninja DVD sent from my uncle in Russia, I decided to watch this movie. But since there was quite a bit Japanese language being spoken and DVD had no English subtitles, I decided to watch it with a friend who is good at Japanese and is an action movie fanatic.

Now I will say this movie is not perfect, but as a action movie, and Ninja movies fan, I was thoroughly entertained nonetheless. on par with Blood and Bone in terms of entertainment value, falling just a little bit short from Undisputed 2(8.5/10) due to some of its little faults. But despite its faults, I love this film and will be watching it time and time again (actually although I gave both of them same grade, I like this movie slightly better than Blood and Bone, because of my favoritism of Ninja movies ).