Street Fighter: 14 Years Evidently Not Long Enough
Should it be mentioned that neither of the fighters in the silhouette are in the movie? Nah…that’d be silly.
Rating: 3 out of 10
Video game adaptations have always had a hard and belabored road to the silver screen. The creative vision it takes to transform something from a playable game into a captivating and enjoyable story is chock full of pitfalls. First off, you find yourself dealing with the legions of video game fanatics who play these games religiously and feel the control on the joystick also issues them control over every facet of the character. So, pleasing them can be a particularly sticky task. Next you find out that many video games really don’t have a particularly interesting storyline, which means some writer clawing and scratching at the door to Hollywood has to earn his big break by taking on an adaptation, or re-imagining, that very few others would touch with a ten-foot fountain pen. Lastly, the studio has to try and balance the idea of making the movie enjoyable while still including enough reference to the game itself so they can use the title and character rights. Tack all that together and you’ve set yourself up for one hell of a struggle, and I didn’t even mention casting it! Yet, in the end the studios are happy to jump into the joystick-controlled quagmire because they are banking on the pre-made audience to show up and support their well-played games. Unfortunately, that only works when the game the movie is based on is still popular.
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is loosely, very loosely, based on the 1987 Capcom arcade fighting game. In the original game there were eight players you could choose from who resided in various countries and you fought your way around the world tournament style until everyone, including the final boss, was defeated. In this updated movie version, M. Bison (the original final boss) is a crime lord who runs a rapidly expanding syndicate taking over massive amounts of waterfront property in Bangkok. He kidnaps Chun-Li’s father to use his political connections and Chun-Li vows to take revenge and save him. Along the way she meets Gen, an old sage who once was a partner and fellow criminal alongside Bison, but has since turned his effort to helping people instead of hurting them. He teaches her to focus her energies and discover the secret to defeating Bison when the time comes. Running parallel to Chun-Li’s story is a rough and rugged Interpol agent who has been chasing Bison for most of his career and with the help of his new, vivacious partner in the Chinese gangland police force, he vows this is where the chase ends.
Now, brace yourselves, because this is where the niceties and political movie speak comes to a crashing halt.
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is terrible. It is a prime example of a studio and creative team reaching way beyond their abilities and trying to force the movie into a category it doesn’t belong (that being “good films”). They attempted to create a story out of a game where there really was none and build it into a possible franchise, but God help us if we get one of these for each character in the game. Other than the names the movie had virtually nothing to do with the game and only references it in the most trivial of ways. Street Fighter was a fighting game and for some insane reason they decided to make a movie with very few fight scenes, one of which, the highly anticipated battle between Chun-Li and Vega (barely acted by Taboo from the band Black Eyed Peas) only lasted thirty seconds and underwhelmed in an unimaginable fashion. Most of the first half is spent building up Chun-Li’s past and why her dad gets kidnapped, but all we needed to see was her kicking ass from the moment the lights go down. I never thought I would ever write these words, but here you go: this movie could have learned a lot from Dead or Alive (which didn’t even get a theatrical release). DoA never tried to be more than a video game movie and they respected the silliness and ridiculous nature of what they were trying to adapt. (Phew, I need a nap. Uttering that statement left me winded.)
On a lucky few occasions you might be able to power your way out of terrible writing and terrible directing with the power of strong actors, but Street Fighter chose in the realm of casting to continue its tradition with all things terrible. Kristen Kruek became an instant star and teenage fantasy of young and old men alike across the nation when she appeared in the TV show, Smallville. Capitalizing on her mixed heritage, she definitely has the look to pay Chun-Li in a Hollywood adaptation, but unfortunately all she has is the looks. In the time since she was a headliner on Smallville, where she is now mainly a cameo on random episodes, Kristen has not improved her skills to the level of headlining a feature film, even one as minimally dramatic as this. Right behind her in the sense of being cast on pure physicality is Neil McDonough, who plays the villainous crime lord M. Bison. He has been cashing checks based on his bad guy stare for years, but here it just felt overplayed, underwhelming and just, plain silly. Briefly showing a touch of inspired choices, Michael Clarke Duncan appears as Balrog and holds it down quite well, even if the Balrog in the game was nothing like him. Also, Moon Bloodgood, who briefly appeared last year in the short-lived TV show, Journeyman, plays the local gangland cop in charge of cleaning up the chaos Bison has brought to her city. Her character is completely unnecessary to the film and routinely just fodder for her partner’s bad pick-up lines, but she at seems to have the sense of the level of quality and tone the film was looking for. Last on the good side of things is Robin Shou, who plays the wise, mystical mentor, Gen. He is no stranger to the video game adaptation having starred as Liu Kang in the Mortal Kombat films, which are another pair of films the makers of Street Fighter could have taken some cues from. In all of this mess, this time I have gone against the grain and saved the worst for last, Chris Klein. Let me first say that I respect actors who know their type and play to it, while also holding respect for other actors who try to push their boundaries of skill. Chris Klein used to reside in the former group, playing the down home, clean-cut, high school quarterback type who just gosh darnit couldn’t seem to catch a break, but the mentally deficient casting agent somehow looked at him and thought he would be perfect as a grizzled Interpol agent with a penchant for bad one-liners and a total aversion to showering. Every scene with Chris reeked of a community theater impression of Colin Farrell ala Miami Vice (and even Farrell didn’t pull that off very well).
Recommendation: For the sake of clarifying why I gave this film any points at all; one point for Bloodgood, Duncan and Shou combined, one point for the film makers actually allowing people to die (which doesn’t often happen in these PG-13 versions), and one last point for giving me a big screen to watch Kristen Kruek on, who still remains quite cute, even after all this time. For those who might be wondering how this ranks up against the 1994 Street Fighter film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, which was front-to-back a true black hole of quality, amazingly enough, they almost cancel each other out.
DandyID
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