Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li - Dir. Andrzej Bartkowiak (2009)


Legend of Chun-Li takes the Batman Begins approach in its realistic reboot of the Street Fighter franchise. Usually in a reboot, you’re supposed to make it better, but the new and improved Street Fighter is actually even worse than the Van Damme vehicle. The previous Street Fighter achieved a transcendent Batman & Robin level of awfulness that it could be enjoyed in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 type of way. There is no joy with this latest installment which gives us the much-needed back story of a video game character.

Smallville’s Kristin Kreuk takes on the titular role of Chun-Li, one of Street Fighter's few female combatants. She is re-envisioned as a piano prodigy trained in wu-shu by her father who is eventually kidnapped by the villainous M. Bison (Neal McDonough). This time around, Bison ditches the red military uniform for a tailor-made business suit. Bison is an Irish orphan left behind to grow up on the streets of Bangkok. Despite living in Thailand nearly all his life, he still has an Irish accent. Or at least, it’s supposed to be an Irish accent. I think Neal McDonough went to the Kevin Costner school of accents to learn it. Chun-Li grows older (and less Asian) until she receives a mysterious scroll that sends her to Thailand in search of a martial arts master named Gen (Robin Shou in yet another video game role). Previously living a pampered life, Chun-Li struggles on the streets until Gen decides she’s ready for the requisite training montage. She gets plenty sweaty and dirty for those of you into that sort of thing. Once that’s over and done with, Chun-Li can work on taking down Bison’s criminal syndicate, Shadowloo.

Don’t look for any appearances from Guile, E. Honda, or Sagat. The only other characters from the video game in the film are Bison’s henchmen, Balrog (Michael Clarke Duncan) and Vega (Taboo from the Black Eyed Peas). There’s also a subplot involving Moon Bloodgood as a Thai detective teaming up with Interpol agent Charlie Nash (Chris Klein).

If not for the titles, nothing in the film screams out, Street Fighter, and not just because we never hear anybody shout, “Shoryuken” or “Tiger Uppercut.” Chun-Li wears a blue dress and puts her hair up in buns for a lesbian nightclub dance scene (don’t ask). She also busts out the Kikouken and a variation of the Spinning Bird Kick as a nod to the game. That’s about it. All the color of the games has been sapped for the adaptation.

For a film called Street Fighter, there isn’t as much fighting as you’d expect. What action there is has been shot as blandly as possible by Bartkowiak whose stellar filmography includes Cradle 2 the Grave, Romeo Must Die, Doom, and Exit Wounds. His streak of crappy films remains unbroken.

Screenwriter Justin Marks has recently become the wunderkind of genre films. He’s been tasked to write the scripts for new versions of He-Man and Voltron as well as the comic book adaptations Hack/Slash and Supermax (starring Green Arrow). Chun-Li is his first produced credit and I can only hope his skills have greatly improved since this sad effort. The film’s worst sin is treating its audience as a bunch of idiots with the attention span of a goldfish. The movie is dotted with narration by Kreuk which helpfully points out all the nuanced, multi-layered motivations and emotional turmoil that we just couldn’t figure out for ourselves.

While nobody expects award-winning acting in a video game movie, special attention MUST be called to the acting of Chris Klein which is so horrendous that it borders on some type of twisted performance art. Klein sports stubble in a tough guy cop role that straddles the thin line of parody, falling somewhere between Sonny Crockett and Nic Cage. Klein’s mind-boggling line readings will likely pop up on YouTube as a video response to Cage’s infamous “Ah, not the bees, not the bees” performance in the ill-advised Wicker Man remake.

Rating: DUD