Movie: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (PG-13)
Released: February 27th, 2009
Runtime: 1 hr. 36 min.
Ticket Price: $5.00 Early Matinee
Refreshments: Peanut M&M’s
Starring: Kristin Kreuk, Chris Klein, Moon Bloodgood & Neal McDonough
Director: Andrzej Bartkowiak
Rating: Check it Out When it Hits the Likes of HBO or Showtime
Synopsis: A crime boss is ruthlessly grabbing power and land in the slum districts of Bangkok. A young woman trains to put a stop to him. Based on the video game.
Review: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is not a good movie. It has some pretty cool fight sequences, but they are not enough to save it from its many bad points.
First, Chris Klein (American Pie) is absolutely terrible as an Interpol agent that has been tracking the shadowy Shadaloo crime syndicate for years. You never buy him for a second in this role. It is partly bad scripting, but mostly bad acting that causes this.
Second, Moon Bloodgood (TV’s Journeyman) isn’t bad, but how she is used is. She is basically just extra eye-candy, no substance. This is too bad, cause she is more than just a pretty face.
Third, the script was just plain bad and I’m not just talking about the dialogue, which was almost laughably bad at times. There were too many places where a character discovered some information that they had no reason to know how to find. You can’t go from knowing nothing to looking at a picture on the computer of the person you’re looking for. You had to have some information to be able to connect the dots and arrive there.
I know it’s a movie based on a video game, but that doesn’t mean it has to suck. I wasn’t expecting much going in either, but was still disappointed. Well, that’s enough with the negatives, even though there were plenty more.
On the positive side of things, they did take the time to introduce the major storyline and Kristin Kreuk’s (TV’s Smallville) Chun-Li. She was actually pretty good, although had to deal with delivering some bad lines like everyone else. She was, however, able to pull off the fight scenes, the one decent part of this movie.
Unfortunately, those fight scenes are not nearly enough to make this worth seeing at a theater. You’d be better off waiting until it hits the likes of HBO or Showtime.
I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. Did you like the fight scenes?
