Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

I believe we all knew this already but this movie ‘King of Fighters’ probably just sealed this thing we all already knew. While it’s clear that videogames are difficult to turn to into some kind of coherent movie, fighting videogames are next to impossible. The problem seems to be finding a way to integrate the need for our characters to beat the snot out of each other and having a halfway decent story to support this carnage, and apparently this is not easy to do. ‘Mortal Kombat’ got over by just taking the ‘Bloodsport’ approach and tossing in the concept of world domination into the tournament mix, but these other fight movies try to get real deep and involved in creating their narratives and we’re the ones that suffer due to this ‘creativity’. This ‘King of Fighters’ flick is really out there and the filmmakers go to great lengths to try to explain to us this nonsense, but it didn’t help. The only thing that I can think of that can help these videogame fight movies, off the top of my head, is to stop making them. I think only Soul Calibur is left so let’s hope it doesn’t happen.

Okay… Mai Shiranui (Maggie Q) is taking a shower when her mystical Bluetooth headset transports her to another dimension to fight some guy. It’s all explained why this is a good thing but I really don’t know. Mai kicks this guy’s ass, while a medusa ball of snakes looks on, and then she leaves this dimension to go back to our dimension to finish washing her ass. Mai has a big date with her man Iori Yagami (Will Yun Lee) who is like the curator of some museum on top of being the former fight champion of the King of Fighters mystical dimension world. This museum then gets a surprise visit from the evil Rugal Bernstein (Ray Park) who steals some mystical pieces so he can go to this mystical world and become the ruler and subsequently rule both the mystical and the real. I think. It has something to do with embracing the ball of snakes.

To stop the evil Rugal, Iori needs the sword of the Kusanagi clan, but the last surviving member of the clan, Kyo (Sean Farris), is unaware of the existence of this sword and is completely unaware of an alternate dimension where people go to kick each others asses. Besides, Kusangi’s and Yagami’s are mortal enemies so these two men have some trust issues. Not to mention the fact that Mai is kind of lying to both them so not only don’t they trust each other, they don’t trust her either.

Meanwhile Rugal has enslaved a couple of hot fighting lesbians in Vice (Bernice Lui) and Mature (Monique Ganderton) to help him in his cause of ruling the world. What our heroes need is this sword. They also need Kyo Kusanagi to find his inner warrior because only he can stop the ball of snakes and save the world. They gave this ball of snakes a name but damn if I can remember what it was. It’s evil though. Believe that.

Nothing but mad love for my man Sean Farris but he really doesn’t look much like a guy named Kyo Kusanagi. Now these movie people know about this stuff much better than me, but I just watched that ‘Tekken’ movie before I saw this one and actor Ian Anthony Dale, who was pretty good in that movie which wasn’t all that good either… while better than this… might’ve made for a really good Kyo Kusangi if for no other reason he’s at least part Asian… and would’ve been playing character who is part Asian. But what the hell do I know about casting?

All of that aside this ‘King of Fighters’ movie is so convoluted and so out there that actually sitting down and watching it is a major test of ones patience. I had chastised the ‘Tekken’ movie for spending almost no time developing its story where this movie spends way too much time developing its story, while still managing to be total inane poppycock. I think that’s first time I’ve ever used the word ‘poppycock’ in a sentence. In fact given a choice between too much nonsense and not enough nonsense, I’ll choose the Tekken approach any day of the week.

As you muddle through this story, every once in a while you will get a fight scene and the good thing is that David Leitch’s fight choreography, who also did double duty as Terry Bogard, is pretty good for the most part. Obviously from watching these sequences the action is artificially sped up to hyper speed levels, but they are, by far, the best thing that this movie has going for it. The bad thing is that eventually we would have to leave these fight sequences to go back to the overly convoluted nonsensical storyline and the truly horrific dialog that these poor actors had to recite.

I told my good friend Keith, a virtual freak for fighting videogames, that I had a ‘Tekken’ / KOF double feature playing on the projector and he was more than welcome to stop on by and partake. I might’ve well told the guy I had a bottle syphilis and a snifter Chlamydia for him to drink because he went off and started listing every fighting videogame movie and why they all sucked. Including Mortal Kombat from his standpoint. Well if that dude didn’t like Mortal Kombat he would’ve killed himself after sitting through just twenty minutes of ‘King of Fighters’ with the only real positives we can lay on this movie is that it was better than both ‘Street Fighter’ videogame movies. Always looking for the positives.