Street Fighter

3 outta 5

Street Fighter is yet another Street Fighter movie adaptation of the Street Fighter II videogame in a long line of Street Fighter movie adaptations. Previous films took big liberties, Legend of Chun-Li badly tried to insert gritty realism, but this sticks close to the source. There’s a lot of corny stuff in here but it is inherently a corny series. This adds a possessed monster God character, the same character that kinda ruined the Street Fighter Alpha anime. It’s a bit too complicated for what should be Street Fighters fighting in the street against M. Bison and his goons. There’re multiple character cameos that don’t have a huge impact but its fun to see 50 Cent as Balrog or Jason Momoa as Blanka. It has a lot of good fights, crazy looking characters and some decent references for fans of the series, making for a fun return to the Street Fighter world.

Ken (Noah Centineo) and Ryu (Andrew Koji) are buddy martial artists who have drifted apart. Ken is a publicity-seeking martial art sideshow, beating up cars and engaging in joke fights as everyone snickers at him behind his back. Ryu is a drifting food cart salesman. But they both end up fighting in the World Warrior tournament, run by M. Bison (David Dastmalchian), competing against colourful characters like the military man Guile (Cody Rhodes), the claw wearing Vega (Orville Peck) and spy Chun-Li (Callina Liang). The tournament is brutal and Bison has nefarious plans to take Ryu’s power, Ken and Ryu have to confront their long simmering resentment, Chun-Li wants revenge against Bison for killing her father, and there is a dark deity Akuma (Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoa’i). An entity so powerful it may corrupt Ryu himself.

The anime Street Fighter Alpha had the Akuma character which took away from the Street Fighting tournament everyone knows. Akuma was introduced as an alternate boss in a different version of Street Fighter II but he’s never gained the notoriety Bison has. Even though Street Fighter has stuff like magic power uppercuts, bringing an Evil God seems a bit much. Reigns’ Akuma is pouring evil magic from CGI and makeup which at least looks intimidating. It just gets really weird when Ryu is corrupted by the dark power of Akuna and transforms into dark Ryu. Their backstory is told in anime style flashbacks that look really good and feel like the art style of the original game. It is a cool visual that references the various anime Street Fighter movies.

Momoa as Blanka certainly looks more accurate to the video game than the sickly green looking guy from the 1994 film. He is a mostly CGI version who yells and shoots electric bolts from his hands. The VFX for him look pretty cartoony but such a weird character was always going to look cartoony. He gets a moment when Blanka isn’t as monstrous as he seems, and there is a funny moment when he tries to give Ryu a necklace of bones that is just really repulsive. Blanka cartwheels away which is a crazy move Blanka could do in the game. 50 Cent is a very accurate Balrog, whacking folks with his big boxing gloves, which is what Balrog does. There are so many characters in the Street Fighter universe that inevitably some characters are reduced to walk-ons.

This film has a bunch of Easter Egg references to the rest of the franchise. There is a mini-game where Ken beats up a car for maximum damage which is presented here as one of Ken’s goofy publicity gigs. One of the best lines by Bison in the 1994 film is him saying “For me, it was Tuesday” and it gets reused here slightly differently. Probably one of the wildest obscure references is a random steamy shot of Chun-Li walking into a shower. In the 1994 anime film there’s a gratuitous Chun-Li shower scene, and while this is slightly less gratuitous they definitely knew what they were doing. The joke here is it cuts to a close-up of sumo wrestler E-Honda’s tits instead of a lot more of Chun-Li like in the anime.   

The love/hate relationship between Ken and Ryu has some heartfelt character beats and good action moments. Bizzarely, the climax involves them singing what’s going on. There are a lot of good needle drops like Rob Zombie More Human than Human or The Offspring Come Out and Play which complements the action nicely. Hard hitting action with crazy characters looks very much like the game. Liang’s Chun-Li is not impressed by Ken and Ryu and gets to be really snarky, while Rhodes as Guile has a lot of funny bits like his frustration at being defeated at the tournament by Vega. Eric Andre is an announcer and a lot of his pronouncements are amusingly absurd. Dastmalchian as Bison gets to be weird, sniffing the feet of his captives and killing off people easily, but he is very good at delivering lines in a intimidating way and Dastmalchian definitely has the jawline to be Bison.

After all the build-up, the movie has kind of a crummy To Be Continued ending for a 2^nd film that may never happen. Street Fighter may not convert newcomers to the franchise, it knows the source and plays the hits.