- Title: Tekken
- IMDb: link
Throwback Tuesday takes us back to 2009’s adaptation of the Tekken video game franchise. Set in a dystopian 2039, the film follows Jin Kazama (Jonathan Patrick Foo) enter the Iron Fist tournament after the death of his mother (Tamlyn Tomita) where he’ll face off against the likes of Marshall Law (Cung Le), Miguel Caballero Rojo (Roger Huerta), Yoshimitsu (Gary Ray Stearns), and Bryan Fury (Gary Daniels) while hoping to kill the man he blames for his mother’s death Heihachi Mishima (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa).
Tekken is a throwaway action flick that offers some fun while it focuses on the tournament and Jin’s journey. Sure, it gets a bit lost when Kazuya Mishima (Ian Anthony Dale) begins screwing with the tournament in order to kill Jin before he has a chance to win, revealing the truth about Jin’s parentage in the process, but there’s plenty of dumb fun to go around and we get Kelly Overton looking as good as humanly possible as the flirtatious Christie Monteiro, along with Candîce Hillebrand and Marian Zapico as the Williams sisters and Mircea Monroe as Jin’s girlfriend.
Panned by the director of the games, and so poorly received in its overseas release that it never made it to theaters in the United States, Tekken went straight to home video (which honestly is where it probably always belonged). The more realistic approach (okay, realistic for Tekken) also means my favorite character from the franchise doesn’t make an appearance. All that said, the goofy tournament works at least as well as either Mortal Kombat film, and Foo and Overton make a likable pair of characters to follow through the craziness that ensues. Tekken has been released on both Blu-ray and DVD and is currently available on several streaming platforms.
