Sunday, March 01, 2009

Street Fighter: Legend of Chun-Li Review



Went to see Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-li Friday. It was an ok movie, but not great. And the only thing it really had in common with Street Fighter were character names. So if your looking for a Street Fighter based movie this isn't it. In fact it's best you forget it's even supposed to be based on the game before watching it.

More after the jump... warning spoilers.



The plot of the movie consists of Chun-li's father being abducted by Bison when she was a kid. Years later her mom dies and she receives a mysterious scroll that points her to Bangkok where she must wander the streets until a guy named Gen thinks she's ready to be trained to take on Bison.

Bison is the leader of the criminal organization Shada'loo. Apparently he was orphaned as a baby in Bangkok, grew up in the slums there, and somehow developed an Irish accent. Wanting to rid himself of a conscience he transfers all his goodness into his unborn daughter by ripping her out of his wife's womb with his bare hands. Because of this his daughter is supposed to be his only weakness, but then they don't really do anything with this in the film except to introduce the daughter and then have Chun-li and the police kidnap? her just before Chun-li's final fight with Bison.

Balrog and Vega also appear in the film. Balrog is Bison's right hand man and has the most screen time of the two. Vega has has very little screen time, and his fight with Chun-li is practically over before it even begins.

There was only one scene which seemed even remotely Street Fighter related, and that was when Chun-li went to a night club in a blue dress with her hair up in buns. She wanted to get information out of a woman that worked for Bison, and during her escape she did the technique from the game where she spins around on her hands kicking her opponents. The rest of the movie barely resembled anything from Street Fighter.

At the end they hinted at what the next movie would be about, IF another movie even gets made. Gen shows Chun-li a flyer for a Street Fighter competition and says he's heard good things about this fighter "Ryu something"

If your interested in seeing this movie I would probably wait until it was on DVD and rent it, or go to a cheap theater if you have one in your town.

Image from Killer Movies

2 comments:

gordon said...

Chun-li's father is a local actor here. does he has decent amount of screen time?

TheLastGameMaster said...

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3 or 4 scenes. One at the beginning teaching a young Chun-li Wushu, then a fight against Balrog where Bison takes him away as the young Chun-li watches. Next scene is an attempt to explain why Bison is holding him hostage as Bison gives him a disc with photos of grown up Chun-li and a recording of her piano recital. Last scene he's reunited with Chun-li then Bison snaps his neck.

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