Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li

What’s the Story?

Chun-Li (Kristin Kreuk) was a beloved little girl, whose father wanted her to be a concert pianist and loved teaching her the ways of the martial arts; when her father was taken from her in her youth by the crime lord Bison (Neal McDonough), she was heartbroken. Years later, after her mother's death, Chun-Li leaves her piano behind after a mysterious scroll tells her she must leave for Bangkok to find a mystic mentor in the martial arts, uncover the truth of what happened to her father, and face Bison.

Is It Any Good?

Director Andrzej Bartkowiak has made previous, disposable mainstream martial-arts action films like Romeo Must Die and Cradle 2 the Grave -- which were hardly good, but weren't as painfully bad as STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI. Saddled with cheap-looking cinematography, talky voice-over, and some hilariously bad performances (including Chris Klein in ludicrously overdone stubble-and-grimace mode as a driven Interpol cop), Street Fighter feels almost like a parody of itself.

The plot is a mishmash of a thousand other action films -- Chun-Li finds a mystic teacher, trains to access her talents at a new level and forsake anger so she might stop the man who took her father, even as the cops (Klein and Moon Bloodgod) are closing in on Bison as well; meanwhile, Bison (who for some reason has an Irish accent that's taken from the old Lucky Charms commercials) is enacting a plan to drive the poor from Bangkok's slums to buy the land and profit from it. But everything in Street Fighter is obvious -- from the unsurprising big twist to the clumsy set-up for a sequel -- and the actors are as wooden as the script is poorly-crafted. The marital arts cinema can offer vibrant action and thrilling technique, but here the look, feel, and excitement of a whole genre is just exploited ineptly for a 97-minute long commercial.