DVD Review: "THE TOURNAMENT." Score B-

The Tournament is a action movie that is purely made to blow up stuff, flip cars, cut off fingers and exploding heads and bodies. The plot of this film is ridiculous as the world's best assassians meet every 7 years to hunt each other to the death in 24 hours until there can be only one who wins a $10 million dollar prize. Just on that alone you have to write off this movie for nothing more than watching the action. Kelly Hu is basically the lead of this kicking ass all over the place. Ving Rhames is the former tournament winner who is back to avenge his wife's murder which was ordered only to make him join the tournament again. Added for no real reason is Rober Carlye who is an alcoholic poor priest that gets tied up in the game by drinking a cup of coffee that has a tracking marker/mini bomb in it, because one of the assassins removed his. The action and stunts and fighting are all top notch and deserve to be in a movie far better than this plot and writing. This film is so implausible, lacks any conventions of logic and character motivations, and the continuity is a mess (at one point the countdown clock says their is fifteen minutes left and the scenes change from dead of night after highway explosions to bright light of the next day outside a random church) The host/mastermind of the game is more like an announcer of WWE wrestling matches, as he has that movie trailer guy voice that removes him from believing that he is the character. On top of it all the billionaires watching the game and betting on it can somehow watch every moment of every fight etc. because the city has the most closed circuit cameras in the world and the techs can hack every one of them including ones in busses, in gas stations even on moving highways during 120 mph chases! The plot holes abound with cases like that if one assassin can remove his tracker why don't they all just do that? Or that the priest who swallowed that tracker, can't throw it up at first, or crap it out but magically 23 hours later he coughs it up with no problem. Or even that a $10 million prize seems way low for the top assassins (couldn't they take a billion just killing one of the billionaires?). Despite it all.... the action in this is really good. The directors and producers could have made this a comic book esqe film like WANTED or RUNNING MAN and we could have dismissed the plot and other issues. So this one is only for action fans that is it. But its great action at that.