Purely Joyful Movie!

Instant Favorite.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

The Tournament is just about as awesome as action movies can get, and just about as bloody too. I love films involving assassins, contests, games, violence and such. The Running Man was clearly a huge influence on this one, right down to the inclusion of a larger than life game show host, here played by Liam Cunningham. Liam plays a shadowy nut job named Powers, and every four years he arranges an elaborate and incredibly destructive Olympic games for contract killers and psychos alike. Every time he hosts it in a new city, using hidden cameras and explaining away the damage with disasters and attacks. If this sounds so very 80's, it is. We're in throwback city here, with a touch of modern tone not unlike Joe Carnahan's Smokin Aces. The reigning champion is Joshua Harlow (Ving Rhames), a brutal warrior who has been coaxed back into the game with revenge on his mind. Each assassin is fitted with a tracking device so they can track each other, an idea which goes haywire when a civilian accidentally gets stuck with one and ends up in the cross hairs. The civilian in question is a drunken priest (lol) played by Robert Carlyle, who has no idea what's going on and suddenly has a dwindling life expectancy. He catches a break when a lethal but sympathetic female competitor (beauty queen Kelly Hu is an angel of physicality) takes pity and decides to help him out. They've got quite an armada to cut through though, including a rowdy cockney whacko (Craig Conway) a parkour master (Sebastian Foucan), an ex Spetsnaz freak (Scott Adkins) with a habit of blowing stuff up left right and center, and lastly a Texan pretty boy lunatic played cheerfully by Ian Somerhalder. He's so evil they just had to include a bit where he shoots a stray dog in the face without batting a perfect eyelash (animal lovers, you've been forewarned). All this mayhem is taken in by Powers and his sickening audience of wealthy kingpins, who sit in a great big boardroom and bet on the outcome of the carnage. Cunningham is a blast of devilish charm as Powers, an amoral villain of dark showmanship and sociopathic class. Between exploding heads, grenades ripping through the streets of London, frenetic hand to hand combat, colorful personalities, over the top depictions of bad human behavior and a general sense of hedonistic, slash and burn glee, this is one for the books.

This could have been a really great action/thriller. It has a very solid storyline and some decent action and fight scenes but the film's laughable, cheap special effects and gore are too great a flaws. Also, Ving Rhames is terribly miscasted here. He's a good enough actor and all, and has played some tough guy roles pretty well. (Think Melvin in Baby Boy 2001 or Diamond Dog in 1997's Con Air.) However, being the world's deadliest, kick-ass, assassin? I'm not buying it. And it shows too. While everyone else's fight sequences are fast and brutal, most of Rhames' scenes are staged so that he has to do very little fighting.The idea of a killing tournament where the filthy rich bet millions on contestants as if they were dogs on a racetrack, in itself, is anything but new. The films 13 (2010), The Condemned (2007), and even 2001's Rat Race and the Death Race franchise have already covered this plot. What makes The Tournament fresh is the subplot where a priest (Robert Carlyle) struggling with alcoholism accidentally gets tangled up in the tournament, and as a result, becomes a contestant against his will. But he's fortunate enough to win over the help of our co-star Kelly Hu as deadly female assassin Lai Lai Zhen. Seeing whether or not Lai Lai Zhen will make it to the end, with the priest as her extra baggage, is the highlight of the film.The two plot twists at the very end of the movie are pretty obvious early on. Otherwise, the story is quite entertaining. So I would say it's definitely worth a look. Just prepare yourself for needless gore galore.

An OTT gore-fest from the start, it's a clunky B-movie in terms of action, plot and dialogue, but if you accept it as that you'll be fine with it. Presumably some of the actors are more stunt performers than actors judging from of the delivery, fists talking louder than script, but the characters' abilities as assassins are truly terrible to the extent that most crazed lunatics would be embarrassed at the lack of stealth and accuracy. That a drunken priest and the world's 'greatest' hit-man are at the moral centre of the film tells you all you need to know. Robert Carlyle is his likable self, and Ving Rhames has a stone-faced nobility despite his profession, Kelly Hu's character is not very convincing (not her fault though, blame the writer), but it's Ian Somerhalder who steels all his scenes as the completely barking Texan gunslinger and all round psychopath. The gore has a touch of Bad-Taste-with-a-budget about it, but as long as your expectations are not great this'll probably do the job.

and - to a less extent - to Ving Rhames as well. The rest of actors are quite mediocre, just showing their skills not often understood if they are real or performed via stunts and computer technique.The plot is rather vague, at times bad and full of clichés and political correctness, many action scenes have their roots from hit films, e.g Speed, The Transporter. The director seems to like Luc Besson and Guy Ritchie, but direct influence is not always a good solution :) The Tournament is OK for killing shorter time, it is around 1,5 hours only, action scenes are enchanting, but often not realistic and over-acted. But it is still more than a B-film.