The King Of Fighters (2010)

 

The King Of Fighters (2010)- * *

Directed by: Gordon Chan 

Starring: Sean Faris, Will Yun Lee, Maggie Q, Bernice Liu, Monique Ganderton, and Ray Park

An evil baddie named Rugal (Park) wants to stay on top as the KING OF FIGHTERS. He has his own special dimension of existence where he can fight whoever joins him there using a Bluetooth earpiece. Certain relics are needed to help defeat Arugula or whatever his name is, so that’s where Mai Shiranui (Q) and Kyo Kusunagi (Faris) come in, because naturally Kyo has “the Kusunagi Sword” or some such thing. Iori Yagami (Lee) also is an opponent of Rugelach and Terry Bogard, a non-fighter, wants to know what the heck is going on. Vice (Liu) and Mature (Ganderton) are also fighters in the tournament. Will anyone be dexterous enough to beat Rugtime?


It must be an interesting challenge to turn a fighting video game into a 93-minute movie. Obviously you can’t have opponents fighting each other for the entire running time, so you have to fill the spaces in between the fight scenes with something. While, in The King of Fighters’s case, it took three people to accomplish this task, still the outcome fails to engage the viewer.

It’s all pretty slickly done in the visual sense, but there’s no emotional or intellectual aspects to lock on to. The end result is like watching someone else play a video game. And we all know how much fun that is. With King of Fighters, we don’t even get the pleasure of moving our thumbs around a plastic controller. It’s a video game that someone else is playing for you, and you can’t even press X to skip the cut scenes. That’s what the plot consists of.

The target audience for this movie seems to be obese middle-schoolers or otherwise very undemanding people that enjoy Mountain Dew and Cheetos as their main source of sustenance.

Sean Faris was an odd choice to play the Japanese Kyo Kusunagi. Mainly because he’s Sean Faris. He’s a himbo of the highest (or perhaps lowest) order. He seems like he’d be much more at home on the CW, delivering highly melodramatic dialogue about turbulent teenage relationships. Ray Park is no stranger to video game-related projects, including having been in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997), which looks like a masterpiece compared to the brainless and taxing King of Fighters. If Gary Daniels or Scott Adkins played this part, it still wouldn’t have saved the movie, so perhaps it was better that it was Ray Park.

So while some scenes are somewhat stylish, it seems like the aforementioned Mortal Kombat: Annihilation might be enough for any sane viewer. That’s kind of the last word on movies like this – in other words, a bunch of people flying around in video game style while techno music plays on the soundtrack. And there is a ball of CGI snakes in there for good measure.

Featuring the end credits song “Go Fly” by Yoshitaki Iwai, King of Fighters is not recommended viewing, unless, for some reason, you’re trying to watch every video game movie out there. If so, you’re on your own there, buddy.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Also check out a write-up from our buddy, The Video Vacuum!

The Package (2012)

The Package (2012)- * * *

Directed by: Jesse V. Johnson

Starring: "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Keenleyside, Monique Ganderton, Darren Shahlavi, Mike Dopud, Lochlyn Munro, and Jerry Trimble









Tommy (Austin) and his partner Julio (Dopud) are Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who work for big shot mob boss Big Doug (Keenleyside). They go around collecting debts for Mr. Big and everything seems peachy keen. One day, Tommy is entrusted to deliver THE PACKAGE to rival crime lord The German (Dolph). Seems simple enough, but Tommy’s life is about to get a lot more stressful, because hordes of baddies start chasing him because they want what he’s supposed to deliver. 

Devon (Shahlavi) commands a gang of highly-trained assassins, including token female gang member Monique (Ganderton), and others, such as Carl (Trimble) fight Tommy every step of the way. Tommy just wants to get back to his wife Darla (Kerr) but it’s going to be a battle to get there. Will Tommy survive, or will The Package be marked Return to Sender? Find out today...

We enjoyed The Package. It had an old-school vibe that we could really get into. All the movie really consists of is a series of fights between Stone Cold and various other characters. For us, the highlights naturally were the fight with Darren Shahlavi, who was so memorable as the baddie from Bloodmoon (1997), the fight with none other than Jerry Trimble, who we thought looked and sounded great, time has been very kind to him and we hope this revives his movie career, and of course the Dolph-Stone Cold battle that the whole film leads up to. Dolph is known only as “The German” - it seems he plays a lot of Russian, American, and now German characters, never any Swedish ones it seems - and it was nice to see him as a baddie after a long string of hero roles. It seems his last bad guy role, or at least the only one that comes to mind, was way back as Ivan Drago.

Not to be confused with the Gene Hackman vehicle The Package (1989), this particular The Package makes for entertaining and pleasant DTV action viewing, and has a different look and feel than another Anchor Bay-released Dolph outing, The Killing Machine (2010) (which interestingly also featured actress Monique Ganderton) - so if you’re worried that Anchor Bay is just pumping out a mindless, samey stream of Dolph movies, have no fear, that’s not the case. Besides, where else will you see Dolph extolling the virtues of a good fruit salad? That alone makes The Package worth at least one viewing. 

Of course, the classic cliches are also delivered (pun intended?) - the Prerequisite Torture of the hero, the wife of the hero who wants him to quit his dangerous job/lifestyle, and a favorite of ours, when the baddies find a place where they know the hero is, then break out at least one machine gun and proceed to shoot up the place from outside, in an extended shooting scene, rather than go inside, giving the hero ample time to survive.

It was comforting to watch a solidly-made modern-day actioner - it always helps to know you’re in capable hands (speaking about the writing and direction, and all the other technical aspects, which were all pretty much right on target). Director Johnson had previously made Pit Fighter (2005), so we were familiar with him from that. The Package gets our stamp of approval.

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett