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