Street Fighter and all the images you see in this review are owned by Paramount Pictures
Directed by Kitao Sakurai
It’s no secret that both of the recent Mortal Kombat movies were disappointments, but you know what? I was never that much of a Mortal Kombat fan anyway. Okay, I wasn’t much of a Street Fighter fan either as Smash Bros and Tekken were my jam, but Street Fighter definitely has a charm to it that the trailers for this latest adaptation captured beautifully. Will this be a fun and exciting martial arts film that understands the source material, or will this somehow be an even more compromised vision than the Legend of Chun-Li? Let’s find out!!
In the late 1980s, presumably due to the success of The Karate Kid, Martial Arts had become very popular and very competitive. No one knows this better than Ryu (Andrew Koji) who was the winner of the very first World Warrior Tournament, but after a controversial victory over the mighty Sagat and a tragedy that befalls his dojo, he puts himself into exile; leaving his training partner and number one bro Ken Masters (Noah Centineo) as the presumptive champion of the world, much the same way Diesel was technically a world champion at one point. Look it up, kids. Anyway, while Ryu is in hiding and Ken is drinking himself into irrelevance, the mysterious and ruthless M Bison (David Dastmalchian) desires to become the greatest warrior of all time and will do so by hosting the second World Warrior Tournament, for which Ken is brought onboard to try and bring Ryu out of hiding. Even if he’s just a patsy, however, Ken’s determined prove himself in front of the world no matter what it takes and no matter who he has to turn his back on to get there. Can Ken prove to be a better fighter than his old partner Ryu, and is there more to his rival’s strength than either of them wishes to acknowledge? What does M Bison plan to do once he has these warriors in his grasp, and where does the mysterious Chun-Li (Callina Liang) fit into his schemes? Are we gonna have to separate these two before the tournament even begins, because it looks like they have a lot more than just sibling rivalry to work through if either of them want to get out of this without breaking half their bones and losing all their teeth.
After a fairly boring summer without a lot of highlights to speak of, the last few weeks have been banger after banger at the multiplex with this only being the latest movie to truly surprise me with how good it was. The original Street Fighter with Raul Julia is one of my favorite B-Movies of the era and one of the best Video Game movies overall, and while this doesn’t quite nail that sense of whimsical chaos, it can easily sit alongside it as a genuinely great example of gloriously excessive camp. It’s an absolute blast from beginning to end that knows exactly what it wants to be, and that’s not to say that it’s carelessly put together or is fun despite its flaws; it’s a much more intentional and deliberate exercise in over the top goofiness that has clearly put in the effort to sand down many of its rough edges while never turning its back on the utter silliness of it all. Its confidence is infectious as it struts around its tailor-made clown pants and invites you to laugh at it as often as it impresses you with its exciting fight scenes and the occasionally sincere dramatic moment.
I’m not sure what fans of the franchise are hoping for, I myself was hoping for a Juri cameo as a post-credits scene, but if you go into this with an open mind then I’d be hard pressed to call it anything than a rousing success. The characters aren’t one-to-one what they are in the games, but the film is not afraid to make use of the iconic imagery and the over-the-top nature of the action to make this feel like an appropriate companion piece. There was no reservation or hesitation when it came to depicting even the silliest parts of the franchise, from Guile’s flat hair to Dhalsim’s stretchy powers, and even the places where the movie had to fill in the gaps with its own ideas don’t feel out of the place with everything else they’ve set up. I suppose you can nit-pick about certain things with regards to character allegiances, motivations, and individual choices that may or may not be considered out of character, but it all works for this movie to make a dramatically-heighted martial arts soap opera. As wild as some of the ideas and situations get, it never feels like it jumps the shark in a way that undercuts the rest of the movie, and it finds new ways to impress you all the way through to the end with creative camerawork, solid action scenes, and the fun use of 2D animation for flashbacks to add a layer of artistry to an already impressive package. Sure, they may only be about half-way to a John Wick level fight, but the playful use of stylistic flourishes enhances the already impressive choreography on display which integrates well enough with the signature moves from the games. Performance wise, everyone does fine; understanding the assignment given to them and going with the flow whenever the movie switched tones from goofy to melodramatic. The only actor who had any sort of challenge here was David Dastmalchian as M Bison, and to be perfectly frank, he never stood a chance against Raul Julia’s iconic performance. Still, they try to do something different with him here and I appreciate the energy that he brings to the table; not so much an unstoppable conqueror, but an aspiring God-King with a genuine uphill battle in order to get there. It’s another case of Malcolm McDowell as Doctor Loomis in the Halloween remake; you can’t possibly hope to overshadow such an iconic performance, but darn it if they didn’t give it the best possible chance and created something genuinely engaging in the process.
For everything the movie does right, however, there is a cobbled together feel to the editing that sticks out like a sore thumb, and the biggest issue by far is that the movie has no idea what to do with the tournament which is kind of a big deal because the story is entirely built around it. This seems to be a recurring issue with these fighting game adaptations as the latest Mortal Kombat adaptations have struggled to find a place for their tournaments as well, and the original Street Fighter movie went so far as to eschewed the concept altogether for a wonderfully bizarre GI Joe riff. The film knows what worked and didn’t work about the Raul Julia movie which makes for an exceptionally fun adventure that, in many ways, surpasses that glorious camp classic, but it’s reach exceeded its grasp by trying to fit all of that alongside an actual fighting tournament, and the film suffers a bad case of indecision for a long stretch of its middle act. We cut back and forth between two different storylines that don’t feel like they really connect with one another until they get smooshed together in a sudden and jarring way that, at least ends the indecisiveness, but once and for all kills the tournament side of this movie stone dead; barring a random boss battle that is cool to watch but feels like a third wheel in a movie that needed much more focus and stability. It’s a shame, because the hard split between two different storylines leaves a lot of fan favorite fighters feeling short-changed when the trailer banked so heavily on faithfully showing off those iconic characters.
A perfect Street Fighter movie has yet to be made, but this one equips itself admirably with a dedication to the unbridled silliness that has always been a core aspect to the series. In some ways, it feels like we’re on the cusp of another golden age of cinema as the Millennials take charge and take on projects with sincerity and dedication that, in previous eras, would have been helmed by journeymen filmmakers with no clue about the material or incompetent hacks like Uwe Boll whose only skill was working with a slim budget. Maybe a fun and well put together Street Fighter movie isn’t exactly the second coming of New Hollywood, but I certainly had a blast with it and recommend checking it out if you have any affection for the games, martial arts films, or just over-the-top movies in general. A tighter script would have put this among the greatest video game adaptations of all time, but I guess we’ll just have to wait to see if the sequel brings it all together. Makes sense to me! After all, no one remembers the first Street Fighter game, right?
