While I remain dedicated to diversifying the subjects of Fromage Fridays, the sheer confusion last week’s viewing has left me craving a bit of cinematic comfort food stupidity.
What better comfort food than the follow up to one of the early films that kicked this journey off. Not that there’s much continuity connecting them. In fact there’s almost no continuity connecting them. Nor are there any related story events connecting them, or previous cast members.
As a matter of fact “Tekken 2: Kazuya’s Revenge” has a thinner plot than the first “Tekken,” which was based on a fighting game with little coherent story to begin with and has even less to do with its source material than that game did. Meanwhile, it also serves as something of a prequel to the original and its titular character, Kazuya Mishima, amnesiacally working under the name K and only learning his true name and identity towards the end of the film, never actually seeks revenge on anybody. Literally every word in this title is a lie. That doesn't bode well.
Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. For those that don’t recall, a few months back I gave my view on the original “Tekken” as a competently produced but ultimately dull and overly cliché action film built around fight scenes that were cinematically unimpressive. “Tekken 2: Kazuya’s Revenge” is basically a complete inversion of its predecessor.
The fight choreography is quite possibly some of the best action that I have ever seen in my life. This may sound like a facetious statement but I’m not exaggerating when I say that every time martial arts is happening on screen, the movie almost reaches the potential of becoming a new kung-fu classic. Kazuya is played by Kane Kosugi, who has a fair bit of acting chops but more importantly bring the master martial arts skills to the table needed to make the film’s fights work as well as they do.
If “Tekken 2” could be judged for its action alone, it would quite possibly rank among the best B-movie gems that I've ever managed to dig up. Unfortunately, there’s a reason why this movie hasn't received 4 Shatners.
“Tekken 2” is bad. It is really bad. It is amazingly, incomprehensibly, unequivocally and inexcusably bad.
Kosugi tries to hold his own against a cast of C-list character actors and no-name amateurs but is ultimately forced to wander from corridor to corridor with a dazed and confused look in his face in an experience that I can only imagine must be an actor’s equivalent of purgatory.
There is no direction given to anything whatsoever. The incredibly high quality of the fights is truly shocking considering how little content exists everywhere else. The dialogue is incomprehensible nonsense that has nothing to do with Kazuya’s amnesiac situation, the criminal underground that he navigates, or the nonexistent characters that he is forced to “interact” with but after watching mounting 5 minutes montages of him wandering in slow motion with cuts of flashback footage depicting events that have occurred merely minutes before hand, you begin to grow ravenous for it if for no other reason than to throw these actors a bone.
I didn't believe it was possible to screw up the editing of a man walking in a single direction but I've seen high school students put together more impressive scenes in Windows Movie Maker.
An hour and a half long string of fight scenes shouldn't have been bungled this badly, making “Tekken 2” another case of weird recommendation.
This movie is not so bad it’s good, it is downright awful; it is one of the worst films with some of the best content that I have ever stumbled upon. However, stupendous stunt choreography in the action sequences and the simply mesmerizing levels of incompetence within every iota of the filmmaking process make it something that absolutely must be seen to be believed.
2 Shatners out of 4
Bottom Line: Even on a scale of measurement for sheer cinematic corniness, I can’t give praise to this film but by all means does it make for a memorable experience.
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