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.
