Budget: (Lower than Tekken (2010) )

Director: Wych Kaosayananda (Wych Kaos)

(Courtesy of IMDB)

Don’t you just love sequels? How about sequels that are prequels, and craft an original story that leaves you dumbfounded on where it fits in the canon?

Well that’s where Tekken 2 fits in and while there is nothing wrong with a stand-alone sequel, this one just like Godzilla 98 would serve better as a non-Tekken movie.
For little to nothing about this film had anything to do with the other, except the appearance of Tekken City, and the wall to the slums.

An original title and name would’ve made this one do fine…possibly…

 

Like the box art describes the film deals with Kazuya’s backstory in the slums, and attempts to show him as a tragic figure who becomes an assassin. It opens with our hero laid out across a bed, awakening with no recollection of who he is an or why he is there.

Get used to seeing this expression cause he carries it throughout the whole movie.

They brought the whole “I’m an amnesiac/who am I?” story into this film, and it starts off with a bang, our hero is battling his way out of the hotel room similar to other action movie classics.  He has a memory flash which causes him to pause in his momentum as a car comes and hits him with a beautiful woman stepping out to retrieve him, and take him to where a man called the Minister who attempts to recruit him in his cult of killers.

It’s the Minister!

 

 

K and his Handler (Whose name I really forgot about during my viewing)

I won’t sugercoat it for you but this movie is filled with forgettable, one-dimensional characters and our main hero is dubbed K has to go on fetch quests throughout the movie in stopping other criminals within the slums by the Minister’s command.

Why doesn’t he refuse the Minister? You might be thinking well… The minister put an
explosive into his chest…(yeah this movie feels pretty forced but don’t worry it gets worse).

While we follow K’s exploits along with his handler the female from before whom is responsible for sending him his assignments, we begin to see a familiar face eventually in
Bryan Fury once again portrayed by Gary Daniels.

He isn’t a cyborg yet, and honestly if you’re excited by Bryan Fury…don’t be, he doesn’t do much but just show up and go away.  Everyone who is Tekken based in this“prequel” are just portraying them in name only anyways because Kazuya never needed to be in a memory-blank state to become the jackass he will be in the first Tekken movie (let alone the games).  I guess it’s a way to show you that he wasn’t always a bad person but meh back to the review.

 

Eventually there is a love interest and she isn’t Jun, and she isn’t even all that important except to give Kazuya some compassion and is a McGuffin character for K to find and uncover along with his hidden past about the world around him.  I will say she does manage to pull the bomb explosive out of K’s chest and so there’s another function.  For the remainder of the movie both K and his handler (I can’t remember if she had a name) have a fallen out with theMinister and both are marked for death. They form an unlikely truce with Fury to destroy the Minister’s criminal empire and the Handler discovers she must make her own choices instead of letting a false prophet tell her with to do.

Meanwhile K finds his love interest missing and begins to battle his way to her location with the help of his handler (Notice a pattern).  The rest of the movies shows
some epic battles from here but it displays K showing the same expression
throughout the entire movie so there’s no depth to his character which leaves
the whole arc as bland as the rest of the film.

At the end of the asskicking spree, we find that the whole thing is a ploy created by his father Heihachi Mishima whom is played once again by Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa from the first Tekken film but looking very different from before.

I guess he didn’t want to wear a darker version of the wig.

What he will become in the “future.”

Kazuya attempts to engage his old man in battle but true to movie form, Heihachi escapes so it becomes another drawn out battle with Heihachi’s elite mooks at the end once again displaying a fabulous fight scene but going against the fight that audiences are probably hoping for to make this film’s climax.  I get it, Kazuya’s a martial arts master but hell I want to see Heihachi get his comeuppance sometime.

Now that Kazuya fully remembers himself he speaks with his Handler that it isn’t over and if his father wants to play games, let’s play games.

We leave the movie now with Heihachi giving us a go-nowhere speech about Tekken City with the sign of Tekken in the background and how Kazuya will come for him.

Damn if this one wasn’t a dud, if it wasn’t for the brilliant fight choreography I don’t think I could’ve made it through Act 1.  It was slow uneven storytelling, and the acting/character arcs could’ve used more depth.  I’ve found some background information that
explains some production history that states that this film was originally just a standalone
movie that had nothing to do with Tekken until the production company acquired
the rights to the live action Tekken franchise and did some minor tweaks
(-groan-).

On that, let’s make this a guideline:

 

“No matter what, just make a full-filling movie because making minor tweaks and
presenting a hack-job like this with a gaming franchise label is disgraceful to
the fans, and degrading to movie lovers.”

I would recommend this to be watched only if you like weak story but love excellent yet repetitive combat but you’ll be bored by the circumstances within the movie that were already addressed up top.  I had a great experience with the first film in this “franchise” but this one, nah it’s not good at all.  I did take the time to study the action and
combat scenes but the best way I could watch this movie was to keep the
connection from the source material as minimal as possible but this one just
isn’t watchable unless you want to talk about how bad it is.

I can only imagine what will happen next after I look into the
live action versions of King of Fighters (KOF) and Dead or Alive (DOA).