Review: “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li”
Franck Tabouring
Seen on: February 27, 2009
The players: Director: Andrzej Bartkowiak, Writer: Justin Marks, Cast: Kristin Kreuk, Michael Clarke Duncan, Chris Klein, Rick Yune, Moon Bloodgood
Facts of interest: None whatsoever.
The plot: Chun-Li, a female fighter, heads to Bangkok to track down Bison and kick his butt.
Our thoughts: I walked into Andrzej Bartkowiak’s “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li” with the lowest possible expectations, but to be honest, I had no idea this film could end up boring me as much as it did. Feel free to hate me for saying this, but this big-screen reboot stinks.
In the film, Kristin Kreuk stars as lead character Chun-Li, a determined female fighter who embarks on a dangerous mission to seek revenge against Bison (Neal McDonough), an evil-minded villain who kidnapped her father and plans to destroy the slums of Bangkok to pave the way for his own empire.
The only thing I halfway enjoyed in this new adaptation of Capcom’s popular video game was the fighting, which is neither impressive nor innovative but eventually kept me from dozing off. Then again, these action-loaded sequences remain fairly limited, and only the film’s showdown manages to give the plot a decent boost.
The rest of “Chun-Li” is totally forgettable. Justin Marks’ script lacks suspense and fails to tell a captivating story, the central characters couldn’t be duller, and most of the acting you’ll get to witness in the film is just plain amateurish. The two with the undeniably weakest performances are Chris Klein and Moon Bloodgood.
“Smallville” star Kristin Kreuk tries her best to come across as authentic as possible as Chun-Li, but she too struggles with terribly weak dialogue and fails to inject her character with anything worth caring about. In the end, there’s quite simply nothing interesting about watching Chun-Li gear up for her final battle against Bison.
Freaky quote: “I want you to send Bison a message. Tell him the schoolgirl's grown up." – Kristin Kreuk
The final word: Die-hard fans of the game may enjoy seeing their favorite characters come to life on the big screen, but I still have a bunch of trouble figuring out where the appeal lies in all this. To me personally, “The Legend of Chun-Li” is nothing but a poorly coordinated action flick that should have went straight to DVD.
By the way, why did they even bother adding Vega to the list of characters appearing the film? His onscreen time didn’t even run past five minutes.
Article by Franck Tabouring
Reader Comments (4)
I am appalled by some of the reviews I have been seeing online. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and I will be entitled to mine. I saw the movie with a couple of my girlfriends and we all did not love it but we did enjoy it. The fight scenes were great and it had a touch of humor. The film is not nearly as awful as some of the reviews will have people believe. I saw a couple of good reviews that listed the great parts of the movie and then listed what wasn't liked. These are the reviews that seem the most credible. Overall the movie was entertaining and the actors did a great job. I mean let's be real, it's based on a video game.
The Sonny Chiba "Street Fighter" movies were Drive-In Theatre classics. The Capcom game adaptations are classic examples of why video games should never be tunred into movies and we can only hope this dismal stinker is the last they ever make. Despite the review from what must be Kristin Kreuk's sister Tiffany, you can sum up this film and every performance in it with the same word; "Lifeless." I don't blame the actors for what I am sure each will try to forget as that really desperate moment when they signed this contract to put Top Ramen on the table. I blame the producers for not recruiting a local sixth grade writing class to produce a much better script than this catatonic story with occasional sleep-walking.
I'm a fan of Kristin Kreuk and I would have loved to see her get a shot front and center in a story suited to showcase her strengths, which this movie is not. Unfortunately, after this really bad career move (fire your agent Kristin) I'm afraid she can look forward to a life of occasional "woman in peril" movies for Lifetime.
I kinda enjoyed it as a guilty pleasure, something to eat up the time with a couple of buddies, anyone share my opinion? found a competition to win copies of the DVD too which is pretty cool http://thecelebritycafe.com/contests/street_fighter.html
I didn't have time to watch this on the big screen since I was too hooked up in grinding for wowgold and raiding in Ulduar. Anyway, I'm a fan of Kristin Kreuk since Smallville days and I didn't know that she could do some action films like this. Some of my friends says that it's like a Wolverine-wanna-be type of movie but I don't care. I got to see this for myself first and I respect their opinion.