STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI: Better than the video game! Of course I've never played the video game.

STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI
Starring Kristen Kreuk, Neil McDonough, Robin Shou
Directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Review by Louis Fowler

I have never been a fan of STREET FIGHTER, the video game. Not that I didn't want to though. Growing up, in the early 90s at the height of the fighting game's popularity, the only choices I had were to go to Target and play it on their N64 demo set-up or the arcade system in the movie theater at Penn Square Mall, all because my family was far too poor to afford a gaming system. Poor pitiful me.

Either way, I never got a chance to ever play because groups of proto-thug Asians straight outta GRAN TORINO constantly swarmed the game wherever it may be and if I tried to get dibs on the next game, even if I put my quarter down, it was met with a “Get lost, fatboy!” as they took my quarter. Hence, I have no connection to STREET FIGHTER as a game and a mild distrust of Asians.

Just kidding. Kind of.

Now STREET FIGHTER: THE MOVIE, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme...well, that's a whole different story! It is without a doubt one of the stupidest movies ever made, that's for sure, but, on that same arcade token, it's also an extremely fun, extremely entertaining time. If you don't get a giggle 'n' squirt from the day-glo lunacy of the whole thing, then, well, you're probably dead inside. When people complained about how far from the video game strayed in the movie, I just paid it all no nevermind. I had to develop a relationship with the characters through the movie. I had to make friends with Guile, Bison, Chun-Li and that one electrical monster guy via this adaptation. It's all I know.

Now, over fifteen years later, another adaptation, STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI has hit and, lo and behold, those same complaints about how it's “not like the game” have derided it once again by the extra-geeky “press”, and, once again, being fat and never getting a chance to play the aforementioned video game, even all these years later, I still have no connection to it and can form a new one with this movie.

The ethnically ambiguous Kristen Kreuk puts her lip-quivering histrionics on SMALLVILLE away for about ninety minutes to deliver a fine job as the titular Chun-Li, a concert pianist who is out to avenge the kidnapping of her dad, using what I think is Tai Chi—whatever the martial art is that's slow and old people do in the park. She speeds it up and teams up with Liu Kang from MORTAL KOMBAT to take out M. Bison. Or maybe just Bison. Either way, for a dastardly business investor, he's quite the ruthless badass.

Bison as an evil investor instead of an evil dictator general? Bring it on! No blue-flowery ear-muffs for Chun-Li? I can live without them! A Black Eyed Pea as Vega? Sure, why not! None of this STREET FIGHTER canon is needed, as CHUN-LI works well without it. Director Andrzej Bartkowiak (I'm pretty sure his parents named him after mashing down a keyboard with their palms), who also helmed other such fun flicks as DOOM, CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE and EXIT WOUNDS, doesn't take any of this seriously and while it never reaches the campy heights of the '94 film, it does have a pseudo-grittiness that makes the fight scenes pop more than would be expected.

My main complaint? Chris Klein as Agent Charlie Nash, popping gum and trying to play slick like he was coming off the set of SIMON AND SIMON: THE MOVIE as directed by the Broken Lizard morons. Every time Klein is on screen it's both cringe-worthy and revelatory: you fully realize just how cardboard this guy is and how he has no idea to create a character. He's got two modes: wispy beard and wispier beard. Isn't about time we Tara Reid this jackass for good?

STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI is probably not on your buy list, or even on your rent list. But, then again, the original flick probably wasn't either, but, by chance, you saw it in a five dollar bin at Wal-Mart and remembered that you kinda thought it was cheesy, so you bought it and thoroughly enjoyed it. That's pretty much what will happen with CHUN-LI. I promise you'll buy it two or three years from now in a bargain bin. That is if some Asian dude doesn't bump you out of the way first...