TEKKEN Blu-ray Review

Posted July 20th, 2011 by Brandon A. DuHamel

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Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Video Codec: AVC/MPEG-4
Resolution: 1080p/24
Audio Codec: English Dolby TrueHD 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH
Region: A (Region-Locked)
Rating: R
Discs: 2 (1 x Blu-ray + 1 x DVD + Digital Copy)
Studio: Anchor Bay Entertainment
Blu-ray Release Date: July 19, 2011
List Price: $39.99

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Overall

The Film

Video Quality

Audio Quality

Supplemental Materials

Click thumbnails for high-resolution 1920X1080p screen captures

(Screen captures are lightly compressed with lossy JPEG thus are meant as a general representation of the content and do not fully reveal the capabilities of the Blu-ray format)

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The Film

What is one to expect from a film based on a video game? Most of them are thoroughly disappointing and run the gamut from ponderously serious to downright inane. TEKKEN falls somewhere in the middle. It’s an explosion of action right from the beginning and it never lets up. An obvious production meant to please with both sight and sound, it takes its cues directly from the video game without shame and casts a host of MMA fighters to fill out the action.

Then there’s the nearly nonexistent storyline. It’s a dystopian future, 2039, and several world wars have devastated society, which is now ruled by super-corporations; the most powerful and cruel of these is TEKKEN. Our hero Jin (Jon Foo) is living underground in the outskirts of the city running items on the black market. He witnesses the cruel TEKKEN corporation kill his mother, Jun (Tamlyn Tomita) and decides to take revenge on the company’s leader the best way he knows how, by entering the dangerous Iron Fist fighting tournament? Yep, somehow this makes sense. Rather than using his savant-like martial arts skills to get into the TEKKEN corporation and put a cap in the bossman’s ass, he decides to fight a bunch of dangerous opponents for the slight chance that maybe he might, what, win and after being beat up get a chance to kill the boss? Add to this a convoluted subplot involving TEKKEN’s leader, his son, and Jin’s father, and this film is really just a mess best watched with your brain turned completely off.

Video Quality

TEKKEN was captured in HD on a Sony CineAlta F23 and it arrives in a 1080p/24 AVC/MPEG-4 encodement on Blu-ray. The film is obviously made from the start to be a long bit of eye candy and that’s how it looks in this Blu-ray release. Even with the purposely grittiness, that high frequency information actually works here, looking not like obtrusive video noise, but like a visual effect. Blacks are inky, colors are vibrant, especially the deep, vermillion reds that really pop.

Audio Quality

As one might expect, TEKKEN‘s lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack is aggressive right out of the gate, with lots of discrete sound effects panned into the surrounds, deep bass and wide, active stereo imaging across the front. It suffers, however, from obvious crackle in dialogue and some overly tweaked high frequencies that can become fairly fatiguing at higher volume levels during the most active sequences when bullets are flying and even constant crowd noise is going during the fight sequences.

Supplemental Materials

Apart from a brief featurette that highlights the film’s stunt stars, there’s nothing but a trailer, pretty barebones, unless you factor in the Digital Copy.

Stunt Stars: TEKKEN (1.78:1; 1080i/60)
Trailer (2.35:1; 1080p)
DVD
Digital Copy

The Definitive Word

Overall:

TEKKEN is amazing home theatre entertainment that is about as brain dead as one of the fighters it portrays who’s taken one too many blows to the noggin. Skip it or rent in an emergency.