The Tournament (2009)

I like my headshots big and messy, no doubt about it. When The Tournament starts we are treated with the glorious sight of someone getting his head turned into little pieces with a bolt gun (a great cameo by John Lynch from Infestation and Hardware amongst others) and I know I am in for a nice ride. Sure enough, The Tournament is full of heads blown to bits, bodies exploding and the old favorite, the giant squib. That's enough for me. The story is just an excuse for violent mayhem with 30 of the worlds best assassins gathering in a town in Great Britain for a competition - who is the best of them? All the while a bunch of millionaires are betting on the outcome and alcoholic priest Robert Carlyle gets drawn into it all by mistake.

And that is all there is. A shitload of cliches. The good assassin, the eeevil assassin (so evil that he kills a golden retriever just to show the audience how eeeevil he is), the former winner who is back in the game again and then there is the cannon fodder assassins, the rest of them who are just there to be shot to pieces. All in good fun. It's not exactly Francis Ford Coppola, but it sure as hell works while you watch it. The actors are as good as the material and both Ving Rhames, Kelly Hu and Robert Carlyle do a decent enough job. The actionscenes are nonstop and never gives you a chance to get even the slightest bored. Good fun for the family. For some reason the movie has been on the shelf since 2007 and very recently went straight to dvd which is a shame since this is better than a lot of the actionmovies hollywood churns out, especially since it was made on a budget significantly lower, the measly sum of four million euros which is approximately seven million $. Recommended.