Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li

Yup. This actually happens in Street Fighter: the Legend of Chun-Li.

As Printed in The Lumberjack on March 5, 2009

by Gary Sundt

As a film critic, I try not to walk into movies with preconceived notions. In actuality, I’m sort of terrible at this. Regardless, I always attempt to judge in a fair and unbiased way, and I make an effort to give whatever film I’m reviewing the benefit of the doubt.

Case in point: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.

Here is a film I walked into with apprehension, but promised myself I would view it with an open mind. Imagine my surprise when the film managed to sink below my already low expectations.

You want a plot synopsis? A concert pianist by the name of Chun-Li (Kristin Kreuk) loses her mother to an unnamed illness and feels she has no path in life. “What of your talents as a concert pianist?” I ask. Nevermind, because she’s off to Bangkok to become a ninja warrior to avenge her father’s kidnapping. See, Daddy was kidnapped by a bad guy named Bison (Neal McDonough), who is a top crime boss in Bangkok. There are some stupid subplots involving characters who I’m sure matter to fans of the video game, but we’ll just say it is Chun-Li’s destiny to kung-fu fight Bison.

That is the whole plot of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. Along for the ride is Robin Shou (whom most of you will remember as Liu Kang in the Mortal Kombat movies), and Academy Award nominee Michael Clarke Duncan. I feel sorry for every actor involved because the script by Justin Marks offers them lines like, “He was the milk of my company… but even milk has an expiration date.”

Andrzej Bartkowiak, the man who directed this piece of drivel, is the same fellow who gave us masterpieces like the Doom adaptation and Cradle 2 the Grave. While I’ll be generous and say Grave’s merits are somewhat debatable, I’ve got to wonder what Capcom was thinking when they handed their franchise to the director of Doom. Did any of you see Doom? It was (expletive)ing terrible.

I think what bothers me the most about this Street Fighter flick is the plethora of good martial arts films that exist. During one of Chun-Li’s awful, ineffective narrations, I thought of the remarkably cold and effective commentary in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. During the lackluster and poorly choreographed fight sequences, I remembered the masterful wirework of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. There are talented people who know how to tell stories of this type without being laughable, or in the case of Street Fighter, nauseating.

What I kept asking myself as I sat watching this repulsive atrocity was, “What are these other people doing in this theater?” I mean, this is a job I’m doing, and sometimes that means watching movies like Street Fighter. But what did the rest of these people think they were getting themselves into? There were entire families in attendance, for God’s sake.

I think the point I’m getting at here is Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is a joyless piece of trash. No, it isn’t Ghoulies, and it certainly isn’t Manos: The Hands of Fate. But Street Fighter gave me a rather serious headache, which makes it one of the few films in my reviewing history that caused me physical pain.

I suppose that’s the price I pay for giving the film the benefit of the doubt.