Street Fighter (1994) * * A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp Copyright 1998 by Serdar Yegulalp
CAPSULE: If MORTAL KOMBAT is at the high end of the video-games-to-movies spectrum....
Well, at least they tried. Alas, STREET FIGHTER is still a lousy movie, period. They were trying to make at least an enjoyably lousy movie, but they haven't even managed to do that. Video games often make bad movies, but at their best they can make enjoyably pulpy ones like MORTAL KOMBAT. At their worst, you get SUPER MARIO BROTHERS. Or this.
Capcom's video game, which revitalized a sagging coin-op video game market and created a trend for many other games to follow, had a few firsts: it featured a diverse and intriguing cast of characters to choose from, and it also featured a number of strong and visually arresting female characters (Chun Li and Cammy), who did more than hang around and wait to get saved. I agree: It all sounds like the recipe for an engaging movie. This isn't it. It has the heart of a made-for-TV film and the mind of one of those thimble-deep comic-book tie-ins that got packaged with video game cartridges when I was younger.
The movie takes the basic character templates from the game and casts them in a thin plot that takes heavy cues from the Gulf War. General Bison (Raul Julia, excellent) is your usual power-mad dictator who's kidnapped a bunch of Allied Nations soldiers and is holding them hostage for a cool twenty billion. Leading the AN attack to recover them is Colonel Guile (Jean-Claude Van Damme), who also has a personal score to settle with the self-styled General.
There are other folks who are equally set on revenge: journalist Chun-li Zhang (Ming-Na Wen, the next-best thing in the movie) and her crew (E. Honda [Peter Navy Tuiasosopo] and Balrog [Grand L. Bush]). What up, guys? I thought Chun-li was with INTERPOL -- but never mind. The movie plays fast and loose with the Street Fighter "mythology", which is OK, I guess, as long as the results are at least passably entertaining. And they are. Occasionally, there are some great moments -- watch what happens when Chun-li first does her thing -- but they don't add up to a great movie.
The actors do what they can with the material, which is sometimes witty and sometimes labored. Jean-Claude Van Damme isn't bad (how good can he be?), just tacky, and Raul Julia is a lot of fun -- but costumes and makeup cannot hide his obvious gauntness. This was his last theatrical movie -- depressing, especially since the movie was dedicated to him. I liked Wen's Chun-li -- she looks and moves like the real article, and provides a hint of where this movie really could have gone.
What went wrong here? There's a lot to look at. The set and costume designers went out of their way to make the movie look interesting. The fights -- some of them clearly modeled on the game's own action, of course -- are acceptably put together. But there's nothing to push the movie over the top and make it really special, instead of just something you knew they were gonna try eventually. It has all the hallmarks of a road already traveled, instead of something where they took risks with the goofy material and made it into something wild and unique. It's too routine, too predictable, too careful, and too safe.
POSTSCRIPT: There is a 1993 Hong Kong movie version of Street Fighter that's worth tracking down. It stars Jacky Cheung as Guile, Chingmy Yau as Chun-li and Simon Yam and Andy Lau. It's nowhere nearly as well-produced, but it is ten thousand times more anarchic and entertaining than this one could ever be.
POSTSCRIPT II: An animated feature-length version of the game also exists, as well as a TV series. The series is nicely done; the feature-length anime is not.
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