Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li Review


The video game movie genre is still dead. To be fair, it wasn’t as bad as the Jean-Claude Van Damme film but still that’s still not saying much. It was unnecessary to go from a superhero film like Batman Begins and then switch to a revenge movie the next hour.

The director was the guy who did Doom. Big surprise. Throwing in a random lesbian dance scene with a Street Fighter rap song in the background for good measure doesn’t help either, it just makes it worse. Heroine films will never be taken seriously with stupid shit like this.

Kristen Kreuk was the wrong choice for the title character. With her bad rap on Smallville aside, this film doesn’t display anything of her acting potential. Only increases her bad luck which is similar to Michael Rosenbaum’s career. But like Kevin Smith said “In Hollywood, you fail upwards.”

I appreciated them avoiding the outlandish elements from the game. But still keeping Vega’s mask and claws in there. But the problem with that, M. Bison is such a departure that even the master of Shadowlaw of the source material would unleash his psycho power on Neal McDonough’s portrayal. Micheal Clarke Duncan as Balrog is reduced to bodyguard status who doesn’t get to pull out his character’s violent behavior till the very end. Chris Klein of American Pie fame as Interpol Agent Nash delivers a very dry generic performance. The only actor that pulled his weight was Robin Shou aka Liu Kang as Master Gen.

The pacing of the fights were off by a long shot. Plus there’s not much fists used mostly guns. Calls this movie “Gun Fighter” not Street Fighter.

They expect a franchise from this? WRONG! This movie will bomb big time. For better interpetations of his brand, watch the animated movies or just stick to playing the game.

Rating: 3