Fans of the video game eagerly waited for the release of a second Street Fighter movie since the horrific 1994 version with John Claude Van Damme. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li did not receive much mainstream media promotion at all and largely relied on Internet advertisement to make its presence known. Prior to release, it was dubiously withheld from critics for review. It was the right move. For you see, there was nothing in this movie that could save it from disaster.
At the helm of this project was director Andrzej Bartkowiak who showed much promise in Romeo Must Die. Alas, he couldn’t deliver in Doom and, now, Street Fighter. In stating the obvious, these were two blockbuster video games that gathered legions of fans throughout the years. All Bartkowiak had to do was create a movie that was more-loyal-than-not to the video games and he’ll have a blockbuster hit, if not, a cult hit.
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li was an origins movie. The first of rumored films based on the Street Figher video game. This movie provided the backdrop to Chun Li. She’s the third main character of the video game series after Ken and Ryu. She’s also considered to be the first lady of video games since she predated Lara Craft and others.
The plot was simple. Chun Li was growing up to become a classic pianist guided by her loving father. He was abducted before her eyes and she grew up lamenting over him. When she was of age, Chun Li went on a quest to find out what happened to her father and rescue him, if possible.
The problem with Street Fighter was it deviated with from simplicity. Had they stayed more on Chun Li’s transformation from a little piano girl to a butt-kicking warrior, ala Karate Kid, they might have succeeded in delivering a decent movie. Instead, Bartkowiak and his writers tried to do too much by introducing other characters of irrelevance, specifically Nash and Maya who convoluted the plot.
The character Chris Nash was particularly terrible. He was suppose to come off as a streetwise agent with a sarcastic view of the world, but he came out annoyingly douchy. Additionally, Chun Li’s mentor Gen was particularly bland. For a guy with mysterious quality, there was nothing interesting about him.
The one passable aspect of the film was the fight scenes. The best fight scene was in the beginning when Chun Li’s father fought Balrog in their kitchen. Chun Li herself had some great fights, particularly in the alley with some thugs before Gen found her.
But without a viable storyline and no endearing characters, the movie pinned its success on the star power of Kristin Kreuk as Chun Li, the beautiful star from the TV-series Smallville. She did a decent job, giving Chun Li some humanity and emotion outside of a video game, but ultimately, Kristin Kreuk was not enough to keep this movie from sliding down to a laughable memory.
Article source: http://goarticles.com/article/Street-Fighter-Review-Chun-Li-misses-the-high-kicks/1439706/
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