Bullet Points: The Tournament

Movie snobs would have the world believe that action movies are just a bunch of people running around and shooting at one another.

2009’s The Tournament is in fact a movie about a bunch of people running around and shooting at one another, but the premise of the film is executed excellently and the finished product is what I like to call an enjoyable film.

So I’ll let the movie snobs go back to watching  Topsy Turvy, that’s just more The Tournament for me and my fellow action movie fanatics.

• The Premise: 30 of the greatest assassins from around the globe are invited to compete in The Tournament. The last man or woman standing is declared the best assassin of them all and receives a $10 million cash prize. The location of The Tournament changes each time it is played, with the latest one being held in Great Britain. The location was chosen primarily due to Great Britain having the most CCTV cameras on the planet, thus allowing the high rollers that gamble on the proceedings to follow the action from start to finish. Each of the assassins competing in The Tournament have a tracking device surgically implanted inside them and each are given a GPS tracking device so they can hunt down their fellow combatants. Also, the organizer of the event, Mr. Powers (Liam Cunningham of Game of Thrones fame) has a group of cleaners who clean up/cover up the carnage, allowing The Tournament to fly under the radar to the rest of the world.

• The Players: Some of the key players in The Tournament are highlighted by Powers prior to the start of the competition, they included the lovely Lai Lai Zen (Kelly Hu of Cradle 2 the Grave fame). Zen has been killing people for the Triads for years… Next up was the athletic Frenchmen, Anton Bogart (played by Sebastien Foucan who made his acting debut in Casino Royale). Bogart brings some Parkour action to The Tournament… Russia is represented by a real bad ass known as Yuri Petrov (played by the one and only Scott Adkins)… Then there is the brash and eccentric Texan, Miles Slade (Ian Somerhalder). Slade likes to cut a finger off his victims as a trophy and if that isn’t enough to establish he is sick and twisted, he also shoots a dog… Last but not least is the returning champion Joshua Harlow (Ving Rhames). Harlow was enjoying retirement with his wife in Miami, but was drawn back in after his wife was murdered in their home and Harlow learned that the killer was one of the competitors in this year’s Tournament. It is all about revenge for Joshua Harlow.

• The Wild Card: Caught up in the middle of this violent event is a down on his luck, alcohol loving priest named Father MacAvoy (Robert Carlyle). MacAvoy was just going about his day, sitting down at a local diner for some breakfast, when he became a participant in The Tournament. How did that happen? In the men’s room of the very same diner, Anton Bogart was performing a little minor surgery on himself, as he managed to remove the tracking device that was implanted in him. To keep the device warm (to simulate that it was still inside his body) Bogart dropped it in a pot of coffee on his way out of the diner. The very pot of coffee that would be poured in a coffee cup and consumed by MacAvoy moments later. MacAvoy is a man of the cloth, but not even God could protect him from 30 assassins, fortunately for MacAvoy, Lai Lai Zen comes to his rescue.

The Tournament is one of those movies that can be described with one word… fun. The Tournament has something for every action movie lover. There’s plenty of gun play, some great hand to hand combat, quality kills from start to finish and they even manage to get some vehicular action going with a double decker bus and a tanker truck involved! Having a cast of familiar faces never hurts either and The Tournament certainly has that.

It also never hurts to have some Bonus Bullet Points in a review and this review certainly has that…

• 7 10 Split: In the movie it is explained that 7 years earlier Ving Rhames’ character Joshua Harlow won The Tournament in Brazil and he is coming out of retirement to defend his title in The Tournament being held in Great Britain. But on some of the advance poster art for The Tournament, the verbiage reads that The Tournament is held every 10 years.
• If You Ever: …wanted to hear a priest drop multiple F-bombs, then this is the movie for you.

• Maximizing His Minutes: Scott Adkins doesn’t last long in The Tournament, but his character Yuri Petrov has a great martial arts battle with Kelly Hu’s Lai Lai Zen and Petrov has one of the more spectacular deaths in the film.
• Disturbing Quote: “After I kill you, I’m going to f*ck you!” – Steve Tomko
• First Blood, Last Bullet Point: Lai Lai Zen draws first blood in The Tournament.