Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-LI - Is Not As Bad As Before, But Still Bad Good? Maybe Not.

People have been trying to make movies of popular video games for years and it’s never yielded a good result. The Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil movies have been the best big screen adaptations of video game based movies and if you’ve seen any of those, you know that game movies still have a long hard road to travel before they’re even in the same league as bad comic book movies like Batman and Robin or Fantastic 4. Maybe someone will finally sit down and be able to make one halfway decent. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is definitely not that movie. While the actual story and fight choreography are leaps and bounds better in this reboot of the live action move than the disastrous first attempt at turning the game into a movie, they still managed to get nearly everything wrong. I am going to slightly spoil bits of this throughout, but if you’re reading this review you’ve probably already seen the film, or aren’t going to see it any time soon but will likely watch it in the future on netflix or online regardless of anything I write.

Chun-Li is a piano artist who performs who’s father was kidnapped my Bison, an evil mob boss who wants to control all of Bangkok, when she was just a little girl. She learned martial arts from her father and kept up practice, but basically stopped looking for him by the time she grows up. Then she receives a mysterious scroll at a concert recital which leads her to “The Order of the Web,” and told she must find Gen, the leader of the order, in Bangkok who will help her train to take down Bison and Rescue her father. While this is going on a side story featuring Charlie Nash and some random Asian female Interpol agent investigate the recent murder of every mob boss in the city. Nash, played by Chris Kline who acted as if he knew exactly the type of movie he was making and camped up every line, believes Bison to be linked to this mysterious occurrence and he and Chun-Li’s paths run into each other as they track down Bison.

The acting, with the exception of Kline is atrocious. It seems he was the only actor that was in on the joke as it’s actually fun to watch him make a fool of himself with every line. The girl playing Chun-Li (who I’m not even going to bother looking up on imdb) doesn’t even look Asian. To tell the story of her childhood they had several child actresses play the part as it was funny watching every actress looking less Asian than the next. Also for those who can speak Chinese, it is like nails on a chalkboard hearing her mispronounce words when she “speaks” Chinese in the film. Also not needed was the story of Bison’s origin where to make himself more evil he performed some dark ancient ritual of transferring all his goodness into his unborn daughter. Oh, and I threw up in my mouth a little bit when the movie adaptation of the spinning bird kick was performed.

Now what I don’t understand isn’t why this movie was made, but how they could get it completely wrong again especially where there have now been three animated movies, two cartoons (one Japanese anime, on American cartoon), and a comic series that get it way more right. The story has always been about Ken and Ryu. They were made into side characters in the first movie and Ryu is only mentioned by name at the end of this one. I will give them credit for modernizing it a bit, taking characters out of their costumes and not having Bison perform the psycho crusher.

Thinking about it, the best “Street Fighter” movie is actually Bloodsport. It shouldn’t be too hard to graft the story onto that plot. An old martial artist who teaches two students his ancient techniques has an evil brother who thirsts for more power kills him and is then drawn to one of these students who he can sense great power within. An evil overlord who runs a secret fighting tournament to draw the best fighters from around the world and gain their allegiance or power. An Interpol agent who infiltrates this tournament attempting to take down its leader and expose the organization is aided by an ex-military commander who is looking to get revenge for the death of his friend. All of these stories become intertwined and reach critical mass as the combatants face each other in the tournament. I guess nobody would buy that treatment. Anywhoo I don’t really recommend seeing The Legend of Chun-Li. At least the old SF movie was hovering in the so bad it’s good category, but this one is just bad. Kind of funny how that works out. D-/3.0/32