Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009)

Directed by: Andrzej Bartkowiak | 97 minutes | action, thriller, adventure, science fiction | Actors: Kristin Kreuk, Chris Klein, Neal McDonough, Michael Clarke Duncan, Robin Shou

‘Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li’ stems from a nice concept, which has also been applied in the ‘X-Men’ series: take one of the characters from the original film, make up your own story around it and you have a new movie, such as ‘Wolverine’. ‘Street Fighter’ is only based on a computer game, in which it is only a matter of hitting or kicking each other until one of the two does not get up anymore. Not bad as a game, funnily enough even fun to do, but a broader base had to be laid for the film. They chose the character Chun-Li and made up a few things around it. The sad thing about a movie like ‘Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li’ is that it’s a fighting movie where not everyone really fights. Of course, that happens a lot in action movies; James Bond can’t really fight either. Still, it looks better on him, while Street Fighter is really all about the fighting. It has to do with an expectation: when a girl is being trained to master Kung Fu, as a viewer you want to be able to see that she can actually do it and we don’t get the chance for that, because the shots are all too fast, or too close and too much cutting and pasting. Not impressive.

For the story, the makers had the same target group in mind as for the game, namely boys who are almost going through puberty and are not so close to ‘real life’ yet. They don’t mind a few strange story-technical jumps, as long as there is action, beautiful cars, tough guys and especially impressive ladies. And that’s why the lead role is also played by the stunning Kristin Kreuk (who can’t really fight either). In her Lara Croft-esque outfits, she looks so appetizing that everything else doesn’t matter much anymore. Okay, one bright spot, she has had acting lessons, because her playing was above average and that’s saying something! That cannot be said of two other important figures, the agent duo Charlie Nash (Chris Klein) and Det. Maya Sunee (Moon Bloodgood). Rarely was the acting so lifeless and an almost even worse written couple on the stage. What you see are intentions, images and so-called sexual tension between two beautiful people, neither of whom has any idea what they are doing in this film. They further undermine the already meager whole. Fortunately, Neal McDonough can act and saves some points by putting down a believable villain (Bison).

A superficial film is actually no problem. Every genre has its pros and cons and has its fans and its haters. But a fighting film should at least contain very fat fights, which is disappointing here. If the rest is also like that, there isn’t much left and you feel a bit taken as a viewer. It all starts out pretty good, we are made good, but as the film progresses it gets worse and worse, the tension is nil. In a jumble of intentions, the film loses every sentence and all that remains is nonsense. And disgust in the viewer.