The Tournament

The Tournament possesses certain qualities that make it destined for late-night on Spike, or 1 am on Showtime; several action set-pieces, plenty of explosions, bullets, blood, martial arts, and minimally developed characters. There’s even a shoot-out at a strip club, providing some gratuitous nudity to go along with the gratuitous violence.

But yes, there actually is a storyline to go along with all this. Every 7 years, 30 assassins from around the world gather in one small, out-of-the-way little town, and there they try to kill each other for a ten million-dollar cash prize. And all the while, a boardroom full of rich men bet on the outcome. The operation is run by a man named Powers, who is so well-connected he can cover up whatever violent shenanigans the assassins get up to. I know, that doesn’t sound likely in this age of cell-phone cameras, but it’s one of those things the audience is just supposed to go with.

And to help keep things interesting, every one of the contestants is implanted with an explosive tracking device and given an electronic locator. They can find each other at any time, and if they don’t play the game, then they’re easily removed from the field. But one of the players tries to cheat by cutting out his tracking device, and tossing it into the coffee of a drunkard priest (Robert Carlyle). After he ingests the small gizmo, the priest is immediately considered to be one of the contestants. Fortunately, a Chinese hit-woman named Lai Lai Zhen (Kelly Hu) decides to protect him. Which gives the audience at least one character who can view the situation with an outsider’s point of view.



Also present is actor Ving Rhames, who hams it up as a hitman named Joshua Harlow. A previous champion of the Tournament, Harlow entered this year’s Tournament to hunt down a rival assassin that he believes killed his wife. Rhames isn’t bad here, though the only special skill his character seems to have is the ability to get shot multiple times without flinching or even slowing down.

Some of the better action scenes in the Tournament involve a Frenchman named Sebastien Foucan, who brings his real-life parkour-runner skills to the film. In particular, there’s a great scene when Somerholder’s been knocked off his feet and is about to get run over by a car. I won’t spoil it here, but it’s one of the standout moments of the movie.

All in all, the Tournament is for fans of movies like Crank, Gamer, Deathrace, and the Condemned. And considering that all of those movies received a theatrical release, it’s a little surprising that the Tournament didn’t. But it’s still a decent way to kill about 90 minutes with mindless violence.



- Nate