Writer: Edith Yeoh

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Watch this if you liked: “Dragonball," "Tekken"

If you love "The King of Fighters" gaming premise, this reviewer thinks that it's best to stay away from the movie. Generally disappointed from the beginning till the end, "The King of Fighters" shouldn't be made in the first place - saving fans all the unnecessary sore eyes later.

The movie starts off rather shaky, almost with no clear sense of direction. Like most game-to-movie adaptation, "The King of Fighters" main problem is that there is no clear indication of where the story is heading and as a result, the plot becomes too choppy to follow.

It is understood that the director tries to bring out some sort of gaming feel to the movie by using tilted angles to capture almost everything from establish-shots to fighting scenes. For director Gordon Chan ("Painted Skin"), it is a fresh, creative move to tilt the camera just a little but then when it is used to often, it gets pretty annoying to tilt your head from left to right to suit your own viewing.

Also, the director tends to favour what this reviewer coined as "following shots." Instead of using a wide angle lens to capture the details of every fight scene, the director prefers handheld shots that follow the actors closely. The result isn't very pretty. It's dizzying, too-much-movement and worst of all fancy kicks appear to be chopped off the screen. People seem to get cut out on either side of the screen.

If you're a big fan of the gaming premise, you would literally cry when watching the movie adaptation. There's no clear and strong introduction of the characters, and they sort of come out from nowhere.

The lighting too was bad, especially scenes that are done indoor or during night time. Half of the time you wouldn't know who is fighting who unless you can distinguish who's who through the sound they make.

If by chance you've heard of a steamy scene between Bernice Liu ("The Legend is Born: Ip Man") and Monique Ganderton ("Eclipse") somewhere, don't be too excited over it. As anyone would have expected it to be, that particular scene didn't make it through our censorship board. Sad, eh? Well, don't be... you can still enjoy a minute of "act-out" scene between those two.

All in all, if you're planning to go for this movie, watch it with an open mind and try not judge too much on its surface value.

Cinema Online, 02 September 2010