Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun-Li (2/10)

It started in the early 90s, when Playstation just released its joystick-on-a-brick to give home gamers that arcade feel when playing fighting games like “Street Fighter II”. And there I was, a young teenager, in a sea of other young teenagers, all crowded into a game shop where the owner was promoting both the joystick and the game.

We each took turn at the joystick, battling it out with our favourite Street Fighter character against one another. The winner gets to fight on while the loser is replaced by another who is eager to show off some of the special moves of a particular character.

Those special abilities were not easy to execute without constant practise. They came in the form of a combination of joystick movements and button-punching; but when executed properly, they deal massive amount of hurt to the opponent.

Back then; that was it – the best game in town. That was “street fighting”. And it sure was fun.

You don’t have to have played the game to expect some street fighting. Just by the title alone, you would go in expecting some street fighting. The director Andrzej Bartkowiak brought us Jet Li’s first lead Hollywood movie, Romeo Must Die, and then Cradle 2 The Grave. Those weren’t so bad. So it’s only natural to expect some cool fight scenes from this one. In fact, one would expect more.

But it was such a huge let down. There’s just no “street fighting”. Ok, to be fair, there were two. One was when Chun-Li kicked the butts of some street thugs, that was before she had undergone further martial arts training so that was OK in all sense of the situation – watchable choreography and not much moves to wow the audience but still entertained enough for that first fight scene.

Then Chun-Li encountered Vega on the second one. But where’s the menacing, wall climbing, acrobatic Vega that us fans know so well? Plus, he’s supposed to be a pretty boy, hence the face mask; not the other way around. And Chun-Li went on to wipe the floor with him. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the fight scenes were good, but they were horrible. Even the last fights between Chun-Li and Bison and Balrog and Gen do nothing for the adrenalin.

Coming in at a close second at being horrible is the appalling dialogue. Chris Kline suffered the most with this, overdoing every little thing by portraying a grease ball Interpol agent, Charlie Nash. His acting here was just as appalling as the dialogue. At least he got the bad acting right to dish out the bad script. And Nash only relied on his handgun so again, no “street fighting”.

Third is the story which makes no sense at all, starting with why Bison kidnapped Chun-Li’s father, to why Gen had to be so mysterious, and then there’s that bizarre story of Bison’s origin. Crazy, just crazy. This was just a badly written piece that no director can salvage.

But credit is given where credit is due. Bartkowiak does capture the grit and grime of the game in the streets of Bangkok. Kreuk does well in her part as Chun-Li though sometimes she overacts and her narrative needs more practice.

But there’s no “street fighting”.