Film Review--Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak
written by Justin Marks
starring Kristen Kreuk, Chris Klein, Neal McDonough, Robin Shou, Moon Bloodgood, Michael Clarke Duncan, Taboo, Josie Ho, Edmund Chen

This is the story of a little girl who longed to be nothing short of a renowned classical pianist. We learn of her ambition through voice over narration by her adult Self. She is Chun-Li (Kreuk) and along with her piano studies she also undertakes extensive martial arts training with her father Xiang (Chen) who teaches her a wide variety of useful techniques that she proves to be exceedingly adept with. Unfortunately their idyll is shattered by Bison’s (McDonough) henchmen who kidnap her father and leave her mother in a crumpled heap. Chun-Li grows up to indeed by a pianist who plays extravagant concert halls and is well received. She receives a scroll written in ancient Chinese and this ultimately leads her to Bangkok where she has been instructed to meet a man named Gen (Shou). Eventually she does meet him and he instructs her while helping her get more control over her anger.

This film, adapted from the successful video game franchise, suffers as most adaptations of this sort do. It quite often feels like a video game with little character development, ludicrous dialog, and absurd fight sequences. Still, it does have its charms which mostly come through in the performances which are mostly excellent.

Kristen Kreuk has an unassuming personality as Chun-Li in this film and her tiny frame contains a fireball of martial arts skills that seem to erupt as if out of nowhere. It’s delightful to watch her launch herself into full on fighting mode and her particular fighting scenes have a ballet quality to them as well as seeming to be incredibly athletic. She manages to infuse the scenes with an erotic quality that is conspicuously missing from other such scenes in the film. She expresses a tremendous energy and possesses a strong presence throughout the course of the film.

The character of Bison is presented to be one who has basically sold his soul to the devil. Literally, in one of the more preposterous scenes which is never properly explained, he removes his unborn daughter from his wife’s stomach and transplants his conscience in her so he can be rid of it once and for all. Ostensibly this is so he can continue to fleece people without ever having to suffer the damned pangs of guilt that generally accompany such nefarious transactions. He grew up a thief and continues his activities by managing to buy out all of the waterfront slums in Bangkok and forcing all of the residents out of their homes so he can build expensive, exclusive hi-rises for the affluent. Neal McDonough plays him with fiendish glee yet he never makes the mistake of turning his character into a cartoon. In this film Bison is all too human and representative of the corrupting influence that greed and power can hold over certain individuals who do not know how to reign in their appetites.

Bison’s sinister machinations are not fully explored in this film. I wanted more evidence as to why he’s such a dangerous person and I only got a hint of what he is up to. I learn that he’s prone to extreme violence, commands an army of sycophants, kidnaps well-connected businessmen to do his bidding, and makes plans for obliterating the lifestyles of scores of people for his own profit and amusement. But, there is clearly so much more sinister goodness inside this man. His reign of terror is just too local to have much street value. I assume he is more ambitious than what he appears but perhaps he’s satisfied with his corruptive schemata.

As Chun-Li makes her way to Bison, whom she has learned is holding her father, a cop named Maya Sunee (Bloodgood) and an operative named Charlie Nash (Klein) are following a series of decapitated heads to Bison. Eventually they both intersect setting up the final showdown between the police and Bison’s military squad. It’s a typical battle sequence and nothing particularly dramatic stands out although again Chun-Li possesses a legitimate sense of grace and elegance as she administers her various assaults on her enemies.

Overall, this film manages to be fairly entertaining despite its myriad flaws regarding pacing, style, and dialog. It has the requisite amount of energy for an action film and the performances are mentioned are uniformly good. Robin Shou quietly commands the screen in every scene he’s in. His character is spiritually wise and it’s consistently enlightening to listen to him wax philosophically about various aspects of martial arts and yoga. Ultimately, it’s a film that probably should have gone straight to video as it doesn’t exactly feel very cinematic most of the time. It feels restrained, as if it were trapped in a tiny box not very unlike a gaming system or television set.