The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Blistering performances.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

While I love bad films this one is really not cohesive. The story is OK. The problem is the fact the acting isn't realistic. Your random violence interspersed with weak character development doesn't help yet a good actor could take little direction and make something usable. Example, this is one of Dianna Agron's first works. She manages to make what was probably a two line direction into something believable. Those 2 stars are for her. If you are her fan, and you want to see her fire a pistol, watch this. On the flip side Look at Samantha Alacorn. Her failure to take what she was given makes her character wholly uninteresting thorough the entire movie. Finally, this is supposed to be a fight film about a tournament. 'In the city where image is everything, the criminal underworld holds a fight tournament where legends are born, and the men who own them rule the streets.. 'the blurb says. So where is the tournament?. We get fights yes. if that's the tournament I am disappointed. My assessment: Dianna Agron's the only reason this movie still exists.

The problem with this movie is simply it never find his paste. It present you Zendo as the main character... at first but then as the movie progress he become more or less a second rank character... For a movie about a tournament, unlike Bloodsport for example, there is almost no matches. Sure the movie show a couple good fight scenes here and there, but story wise its correct but there is no character development for a lot of the characters and even Zendo, which is supposed to be at least one of the main character. I do agree also on the fact that Samantha Alarcon is a terrible actress, she feel so unreal when talking, at least she is cute... But bottom line, it could have been a pretty good movie but it is just average...

I'd like to be able to say that this is the worst movie I've ever seen, but I can't because, somehow, I watched it till the bitter end. There's plenty of films (Taxi, Amelie, Closer and a host of lesser known movies) where I called it quits well before the conclusion.The story of TKO is ridiculous, of course, with heavy borrowings from Van Damme's "Kickboxer". At least that movie made an attempt to stay within the bounds of credibility. This film doesn't bother with such constraints. The acting is universally appalling, but special mention goes to Samantha Alarcon, playing Skyler. This person should never again be allowed on celluloid. In fact, she should never again be allowed to open her mouth. I guess that's a feat of a kind, to stand out in a movie where the acting is this bad. Dianna Agron was kind of cute though.The other thing is - why call it TKO? Technical Knock Out doesn't seem to quite apply to fights where "You win. Or you die". Maybe it stands for something else. "Total Krap. Orright?" It gets 2/10 - 1 because I made it to the end, 1 for Agron.