Tekken Movie Review

Tekken has to be my favorite arcade game has to be  with its full-body motion sensor, even if I did get pwned big time by an 8-year-old kid back in the late 90s as a college student. I’m not a hardcore gamer, and I am not really into fighting games despite my love for martial arts, but out of all the fighting games, Tekken has definitely been my all time favorite.

I finally got my Blu-ray copy of the live-action feature film, Tekken. The film was released over a year ago in theaters, but was distributed in theaters internationally and not stateside. The Blu-ray and DVD, however, will be available July 19, 2011. Read my review after the jump.

This movie is actually pretty good, at least better than most game-to-movie adaptations I’ve seen. True, this isn’t setting a very high standard, but come on, who in their right mind would expect anything more out of a Tekken movie besides some awesome butt-kicking fight scenes? The fact that this film has a pretty decent and cogent plot, viable characters, and an interesting enough post-apocalyptic backdrop means we’ve already got way more than we can ask for from a fighting game movie.

The fighting action is pretty awesome. Like the original video game series, it’s like a buffet of martial arts demos (yes, I did try to copy Ling Xiao Yu’s moves). This live action Tekken movie features a world kick-boxing champ (Gary Daniels), MMA fighters (Cung Le and Roger Huerta), and a Tae Kwon Do multi-champion (Anton Kasabov). The lead guy Jon Foo, who plays Jin Kazama, trained with Jackie Chan and has skills in Wushu, Taekwondo, Muay Thai, and boxing. He also played Ryu in the Street Fighter: Legacy short film. To top it all off, the fight choreographer is Cyrill Raffaelli of the founding parkor group fame with expertise in wushu and shotokan karate.

Appropriately, Tamlyn Tomita plays Jun Kazama, Jin’s legendary mom. Hey, she’s not a martial artist to my knowledge, but she was Ralph Maccio’s girlfriend. So yeah. (But Michelle Yeoh probably would have been more legit. Just saying.)

My only complaint is that the Tekken female characters are so kick-ass, but in this movie they are always being rescued by men or dominated over by men. I know, silly me to expect feminist sensibilities in a movie that clearly is made for boys to drool over, but I can’t help it. I was waiting for a male vs. female bout when all the battles commenced, but all I got was Christie vs. Anna in a sort of mediocre ballet battle. I wouldn’t even care if the girl fighter lost big time to a guy fighter. I just want to see her get the equal warriors treatment, you know? It was disappointing to say the least. I mean, if the girls are just supposed to be eye candy, then let’s not pretend they can do some serious beat down and then have them do nothing much. False advertisement.

In any case, Ling Xiao Yu had better redeem the Tekken female warrior’s honor in the upcoming CG animated film, Tekken Blood Vengeance.