Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009) Review

Tomb Fighter

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009): 5 out of 10: Chun-Li (Kristin Kreuk) enjoys a privileged childhood in Hong Kong, where she develops a talent for piano and martial arts. Unfortunately, her comfortable existence comes to an abrupt end when her father is abducted by the sinister M. Bison (Neal McDonough), a criminal mastermind with ambitious plans for Bangkok’s real estate market and a rather aggressive approach to urban redevelopment.

Years later, Chun-Li travels to Bangkok in search of answers and encounters Gen (Robin Shou), a mysterious martial arts master who offers to help her develop the skills necessary to confront Bison and his criminal organization, Shadaloo. Meanwhile, Interpol agent Charlie Nash (Chris Klein) and local detective Maya Sunee (Moon Bloodgood) are investigating the same criminal enterprise, occasionally demonstrating that law enforcement and effective crime fighting are not necessarily the same thing.

As Chun-Li works her way through Bison’s henchmen, including the formidable Balrog (Michael Clarke Duncan) and the rather more agile Vega (Taboo), she discovers that defeating an international crime syndicate requires more than a few well-placed kicks. Though they certainly help. Based on the popular Capcom video game franchise, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li attempts to transform a colorful collection of arcade fighters into a serious martial arts crime thriller. Whether that was a particularly good idea is another matter entirely.

The Good

The Good: You know if you forget this is supposed to be a Street Fighter film (easy to do at all since outside of some the character names this really has nothing to do with Street Fighter) this really isn’t that bad. Good production values and location shooting with the occasional action beat. Considering this was at number 76 of the 100 worst movies of all time on the IMDB list not too long ago, the low expectations do it some favors as well. Both Kristin Kreuk as the titular star and Moon Bloodgood as a detective are watchable and refreshing. In addition, Michael Clarke Duncan is clearly having fun and his enthusiasm is infectious.

The Bad

The Bad: Entire doctoral theses has been written about all the things wrong with the movie. Among the various sins are child actors that look nothing like their adult counterparts (to the point of being a clearly different nationality), Chris Klein is awful and drags down every scene he is in, Chris Klein is in way too many scenes, and the villain makes no sense.

The Ugly

The Ugly: Here we get to the crux of the hatred for this unremarkable action film. Street Fighter fans. This is, by any measure, a terrible adaptation of the source material. Now I have to admit my eyes glaze over when rabid fandoms go on the attack because the backstory written to sell some toys and fill five minutes of a twenty-four-minute cartoon is treated as if Moses himself brought it down from the mountain. (I am looking your way Transformers fans), but Street Fighter fans have an understandable beef.

As source material goes, Street Fighter is a pretty thin gruel. Unlike many modern video games, Street Fighter has more in common with Pac-Man or Donkey Kong than, say, The Last of Us. You have colorful characters and a fighting tournament outside of that a screenwriter has carte blanche to do what he wants with the story. Guess what this movie does not have? If you said a fighting tournament and colorful characters guess what, you will win a prize.

I have top ask though what is it with fighting game movie adaptations not having the fighting tournament that is the point and pretty much all the substance of said game. As bad as The Legend of Chun-Li is regarding this, it is still better than 2021s Mortal Kombat, which also basically skipped the tournament.

This is the equivalent of making a Dead or Alive movie adaptation and not having breast physics and wet t-shirts.

In Conclusion

In Conclusion: Clearly, the screenwriter had a Tomb Raider script sitting in a dusty drawer (The film makes much more sense as a Tomb Raider reboot than a Street Fighter one) and got a call from his agent. Meh, one video game is the same as another, just change Lara Croft to Chun Li and change the Irish real estate mogul into Bison and we are cooking with gas. No need to change the plot about the cave of soul cleansing or the mysterious scroll or the heroine living alone in the mansion with servants after her father’s disappearance.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is a decent B movie action film but in all fairness a horrible adaptation of the source material.