Street Fighter: The Legend if Chun-LI movie review

Street Fighter
The Legend of Chun-Li

So 15 years after the original live action street fighter they decided to give it another shot. This time however instead of trying to cram as many characters into the movie they decided to focus on one specific character and try to get a bit more back story into the movie. How did it work? Read on to find out.

The plot focuses on Chun-Li a girl whose father was taken when she was a little girl who grows up and decides to fight for the people who are being treated unfairly. Along her journey she is trained by a martial arts master has run-ins with Interpol, street gangs and more.

Where to begin? Well ill start by saying I like the choice of actors and actresses I’m a big fan of Smallville and have liked Kristin Kreuk for awhile plus she is half Chinese just like the movies intrepatation of Chun-Li. The guy that played Bison also is a good actor although for some reason the movie felt they had to make him Scottish. Robin Shu was great as Gen although at points I found it hard to detach myself from the fact he also played Liu Kang in the mortal Kombat movie.

Michael Clark Duncan was a perfect choice for Balrog and played the part well. As far as Vega goes I can’t really comment there was no real acting per say. I’m not sure Vega had any lines except maybe a few one word sentences or classic comments like “my face”. What really upset me about Vega is that in both the anime movie and the anime series of street fighter Vega becomes obsessed with Chun-Li and beating her and smelling her hair for some reason. Now Vega does get a chunk of her hair at one point but I thought that Chun-Li beat him way to quick and the movie missed a great opportunity.

A character I could have done without was the addition of Charlie Nash. Now I like Charlie in the game but the movie completely ruins him instead of making him a badass member of the air force he becomes a wise cracking half retarded member of Interpol and just like Arnold in batman and robin most of his lines consist of one liners or innuendos. His female counterpart is no better and they feel more like comic relief then anything and if they just made Charlie a new character instead of trying to fit another game character in it would have been less upsetting.

Now what’s a movie based on a fighting game without fights and specials moves? Nothing so let’s talk about that. The fight chorography was decent not the worst thing certainly nowhere near Jet-Li caliber fight scenes but they where entertaining enough although sadly the most entertaining was at the beginning of the movie when Chun-Li's father was fighting off Bison's thugs. And how about special moves well Chun-Li uses the spinning bird kick which is heavily foreshadowed early on when her father gives her a spinning bird necklace.

What confuses me is how they handled Bison's powers and let me explain a little. In the game Bison has the ability to control what he calls psycho energy allowing him to levitate teleport and charge his fists and feet with energy making his attacks stronger and sometimes he mixes the two like in his psycho crusher special move where he flies across the screen spinning with his hands charged with psycho energy.
I bring this up because Chun-Li also has an energy attack in the game it’s a slow moving version of the Hado-Ken or a bigger ball of energy that is stationary in her hands called the Kikouken and Kikousho respectively. In the movie gen teaches her a projectile energy attack witch works well however they completely ignore Bison’s energy abilities witch confuses me. Why would they show Chun-Li’s energy attack but not Bison’s?

They did not completely ignore Bison's ability usually when he shows up in a room people react as if he just appeared and there is always a gust of wind witch I believe is meant to represent his teleport ability and later when he is fighting gen and Chun-Li whenever he delivers a really strong kick or punch a whoosh sound effect can be heard witch I believe is meant to represent the psycho energy.

Now while his powers may be obscurely represented and his origin is kind of jumbled they did get his attitude correct when his assistant gives up information to Chun-Li the next scene bison is punching what seems like a heavy bag but it turns out to be his assistant who he just finished punching to death.

Chun-Li has her hair in the twin buns a few times as a throwback to fans and her famous dress makes a quick appearance gen dresses like he does in the game Balrog doesn’t have boxing gloves but that makes sense because he’s not boxing anyone. Vega has his trade mark claw and mask but bison dresses as a business man but that also makes sense because that’s what he is and this is an origin story.

One thing that confuses me a bit is they seem to kill off Bison Chun-Li hits him with an energy blast then twists his head all the way around and that’s the last we see of him but then right before the credits gen shows Chun-Li a flyer for a street fighter competition and he hints bison has set it up then tells her he’s going to Japan to recruit Ryu which is neat. Now I’m all for fake deaths like when a bad guy falls off a cliff then the next movie it turns out he didn’t die but I’m not sure how anyone could recover from having their head twisted around but it’s a movie so I suppose we will see.

The producers have said that if this movie does well enough they will follow up with a Ryu and ken movie and we all know that’s what we really want to see. And with the set up for an actual tournament I believe if they do make a Ryu and ken movie we may actually see planed fights in a tournament style which has yet to be done in either street fighter movie.

So let’s see we have got the characters, the actors, the costumes and the special moves covered what’s left oh yeah the story. Well what can I say the basic plots of Chun-Li's back story are there with bison killing her father. She isn’t in Interpol in this one but she does help them out so maybe in future movies. Besides that it’s just a reason for the fights to happen and I think Bison’s back story could have used a bit more work.

How would I do it? Well honestly id change bison to be a bit more like his game counterpart and at one point I would have had Chun-Li use some sort of rapid kick maneuver to represent her lightning kick witch I think is a bit more famous then her spinning bird kick which she did use in the movie.

Overall the action is decent I have heard some people say that the original is more enjoyable and I suppose that’s true in a campy sort of way where as the original movie was funny in its campiness the new ones campy parts are not so funny just annoying however it is a more serious street fighter movie and I think captures the feel of the games a bit better.

Overall I give Chun-Li 6 out of 10 Kikoukens. The action was pretty good and focusing on one main character rather than many was a good move but I still think that they should have done a Ryu and ken movie first.

The acting gets 3 out of 10. Chun-Li, Gen, and Bison where the only real decent acting jobs here Chris Kline and Moon Bloodgood had horrible horrible dialog and where not needed at all for this movie.

The content gets 6 out of 10. There was a good amount of characters without there being an over abundance most of which acted like their game counter parts and there was a decent amount of special moves.

The plot gets 4 out of 10. Chun-Li's story was ok but the other major character Bison they completely ruined making him Scottish but raised in Thailand I mean even the instruction manual says he’s Thai but oh well at least his attitude was correct.

Ok well that’s it it’s been months and months but we have reached the end of vol.1. Vol.2 will start with Tekken in October and end with the last video game movie of 2010. And 2010 will be a big year for video game movies we have prince of Persia, king of fighters, Blood Rayne 3 (ugh), clock tower, possibly a new mortal Kombat and a new resident evil I believe Tekken is the last of this year.

Vol.2 will also mark the start of in theater reviews which means I will be trying to see all of these in the theater and review them immediately instead of DVD now I can’t promise I will be able to make it to all of them but I will do my best. In between Tekken and the start of the 2010 movies I have planned to write a review on Uwe Boll himself so that will be fun and maybe another top ten list.