The original Street Fighter, the Jean Claude Van Damme/Kylie Minogue/Ming Na vehicle that managed to kill the great Raul Julia, is not a good movie. It never was, and anyone that thought it was is a fool. However, it does have one fairly redeeming value-it’s flat out hilarious how bad it is. With lines uttered by Van Damme (playing the incredibly American soldier, William Guile) like “You sun hof ha beetch” and “Ow-fah, uht-tack”, it made the movie utterly enjoyable.
Over a decade and a half later, we have Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. It’s not connected to Street Fighter outside of its characters having the same names as some of the characters from the original. It’s also not a good movie. And that’s it. Unlike the original, there is nothing redeeming about it. Let’s find out why.
This is a reboot, you see, not a sequel, a complete starting-from-scratch attempt at turning the venerable video game franchise into a viable cinematic product. And I don’t know about viable, but there’s no question they have made a cinematic product. No doubt about it, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is definitely a movie. They dug up low-rent action veteran Andrzej Bartkowiak to direct it and paid a first-time feature writer named Justin Marks a couple bucks to slap together a hokey, ridiculous script. They built some cheap sets and put some actors who could sort of fight on them. They put cameras in front of the actors and turned the cameras to the “on” position. Yep, this is a movie, all right.
A concert pianist living in Honk Kong, Chun-Li has her life upended when her father is abducted by a nefarious mastermind known as Bison, who, aside from an evil glare, bears no resemblance to his game namesake. Bison wants to use Chun-Li’s father for his business contacts, which will help him take control of the Thai waterfront slums that he wants to develop into luxury real estate. His plans, however, are threatened once Chun-Li receives an ancient Chinese scroll that leads her to a shadowy crime-fighting organization known as The Order of the Web run by Gen. Under Gen’s tutelage, she learns to harness her anger, hone her butt-kicking skills, and master the art of throwing balls of concentrated mystical energy. Her gravity-defying, CG-aided supernatural abilities turn out to be the only truly cartoonish element held over from the game, as the film otherwise does away with the series’ outlandish costumes and signature exclamations, meaning anyone holding out hope for a “Shoryuken!” will be sorely disappointed.
Nonetheless, even taking into consideration the random appearance of Black Eyed Peas member Taboo as masked ninja warrior Vega, there’s no facet of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li more outrageously awful than a subplot involving an American Interpol agent named Charlie Nash who, paired with sexy Honk Kong detective Maya, is determined to bring down Bison’s criminal empire. With long hair, a five o’-clock shadow, and a cocky macho smile permanently affixed to his face, Klein not only seems to be in an altogether different film, but openly auditioning to play the part of Nicolas Cage in an MTV Movie Awards skit. Klein can’t utter a word or flash a bad-ass smirk without being laugh-out-loud funny, to the point that his amusingly appalling performance winds up making the rest of the story-which also features young Bison murdering his pregnant wife in a magical cave so he can transfer all his goodness into the unborn baby and, thus, become a villain without conscience-look reasonably competent in comparison.
There are a whole host of other problems as well, including the sophomoric and uninspired score by Stephen Endelmen that Bartkowiak uses like a first-time director would in a horror film, the throwaway cameo of Vega that seems entirely pointless and included only to appease the video game fans, and a silly plot point with Bison that tries to draw parallels between him and Xiang. Everything is unexplored and left hanging, and the climax is one of those video game movie moments we all know so well, where the big video game attack move is going to be used, and…yeah, it just looks silly in the end. Much like the entire movie, the final fight is just ridiculous and painful to watch, knowing that yet another travesty has been made out of a classic and beloved video game.
Most people, like I, went into the movie with the only wish that this movie be better than Street Fighter. Unfortunately, that is not the case, and this actually makes that abomination look good by comparison. A half-thought out and overwrought script, terrible performances that are lowlighted by Chris Klein’s laughable performance as a cop, and poor direction doom this film at every turn, making it unwatchable even as a low-rent “so bad it’s good” style movie. In terms of video game films, which is not a tough category to top, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li ranks pretty low on the list. And that’s quite a sad statement to make.
