Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li

Basic Premise

When she was young, her father was taken by gunpoint by Bison. Now that's older, Chun-Li is determined to rescue her father no matter what or who it takes her up against.


Review

RUN!

I'm not joking. I don't even know why they bothered calling this a Street Fighter movie. Where was the street fighting? Heck, where was the fighting? I felt like I was watching Dark Angel meets Miami Vice circa 2006. This was a cop drama with cute exposition about a girl and her father and soul-searching training and a whole bunch of other crap that had nothing to do with one of the most kick ass fighting games out there.

To give you an indication of how much this movie disappointed and annoyed me -- I would have rather had paid money to see the original Street Fighter movie starring Jean Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia in the movie theaters than sit through Legend of Chun-Li.

As I already said, there was barely any fighting. When the heavy hitters -- Balrog, Vega, Bison, Chun-Li -- stepped up to fight one another that was a sorry sight to see. Vega (Balrog in Japan) got his ass handed to him in two minutes. In the animated Street Fighter movie, he and Chun-Li went at it for ten-fifteen minutes at least and she barely beat him. On a tangent note, Vega wasn't even the least bit hot. He didn't look Spanish either. This Vega was some thug in a souped up hockey mask and that was about it.

But, back to the non-existent fighting, when Chun-Li finally squares off with Bison (Vega in Japan) the camera switches angles so often and so fast that there is no fighting to really watch... I was too busy trying to keep my smuggled in Subway sandwich in my stomach. That's how the whole movie went. It was like the producers didn't have enough time to train the actress (like Keanu with Matrix) or they couldn't find an actress that could fight and look like Chun-Li at the same time so they covered that by trying to give the audience seasickness.

Another point of contention was the very obvious switches between Kristin Kreuk (Chun-Li) and her stunt double, who has a very defined and definite musculature that the actress she was supposed to be portraying had no hope of achieving without some serious training that the producers obviously didn't think was necessary.

Add on top of that, the creepy pedophile vibe that came off of Edmund Chen (the guy who played Chun-Li's father) whenever he was playing opposite any of the girls playing Chun-Li and you've got a movie worth avoiding. Wait for it to come on TV. Waste your money instead on the very kick ass looking Watchmen movie coming out tomorrow. :D

Recommendations: Star Trek (2009), Avatar, 300

D. Renee Bagby<br />
Building New Realms of Passion<br />
http://dreneebagby.com

Street Fighter 2: The Legend of Chun-Li

Movies like this give video game adaptation sequels a bad name.

What could have been spunky, goofy fun is instead a joyless, lurching chore of a movie. For shame, Andrejz Bartkowiak. For shame.

Hey, there are lots of good foreign-born directors, but when it comes to action movies we always seem to import the world's worst. Mister Bartkowiak, a long-time cinematographer of movies like "Species" and "Dante's Peak," here gets the upgrade to director. On behalf of the American movie establishment, I would like to say "Oops."

SF2 feels very much like a direct-to-video cash grab. It features lots of low-wattage almost-stars like Chris Klein and Michael Clarke Duncan, and the eponymous hero is played by Kristin Kreuk, formerly of TV's "Smallville." I will not recount the plot here for the simple reason that there is no plot. Sometimes people talk. Sometimes people fight. That is all.

I liked Kristin Kreuk in "Smallville." She played the teenaged Superman's love interest, Lana Lang. Here she fails to satisfy on a bunch of levels. She is patently unathletic and simply not good-looking enough (bad-looking is, alas, not good-looking enough) to stare at in lieu of following the story. Frankly I blame her lack of appeal for the fact that I absorbed as much of this movie as I did.

And when she tries to act... hoo boy, it's a lot of acting. You can almost hear tendons pop, she's acting so much. Everyone over-emotes here, especially when it's inappropriate, and director Bartkowiak has a talent for catching actors in extreme close-up when they are at their absolute worst.

There's a "cop" subplot with Interpol agent Chris Klein and homicide detective Moon Bloodgood (that's the actress' name -- a fictional character would never have a name that ridiculous.) During the movie I played a game with myself. I tried to count the number of lines between Klein and Bloodgood that were spoken WITHOUT sarcasm. The game wrapped up when the end credits rolled. My total was zero. It wasn't much of a game.

I'm not saying "Street Fighter 2: The Legend of Chun-Li" is an insult to every rational impulse ever to cross a human brain between the Age of Enlightenment and right now. But I'm not not saying it either.

Score:

How Accomplished: 14/100

How Much I Liked It: 14/100

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Street Fighter The Legend of Chun Li

After seeing this movie, I am now a coffee mug filled with the Sanka of Hate! Full to the brim, baby! Shit! And I had such high hopes for this movie! Why? Why do they do this to me? WHY??!!

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li is the most disappointing movies since the Star Wars prequels. It's about Chun Li becoming who she is by learning kung fu from some guy and trying to seek revenge on the man who killed her family.



The big mistake this piece of shit makes is that it's not a superhero film. Instead, it tries to grown the movie more in reality and turn this into a kung fu movie. Which wouldn't bother me so much if the kung fu hadn't sucked so bad. Hello? The title of you're movie is Street Fighter. People are coming to see Chun-Li in her glorious long sexy legs kick tanks till they explode. What's the deal with the producers trying to make this a Hong Kong crime film with lousy kung fu?



The fight scenes in this movie is so bad that I nearly wanted to cry. If Chun Li was  a real woman, she'd be rolling in her grave right now. The kung fu sequences here are so poorly choreographed and I get the feeling that Kristin Kreuk barely rehearsed any of the moves cause she looked like a cute little girl kicking like David Beckham.




And how on Earth could they take a hot ass like Kristin Kreuk and make her so uninteresting in this movie? For the most part, we only have Kristin Kreuk look like she was just hit by a sand truck or have been sleeping in a cave for 10 days. Cause that bitch looked like some homeless girl.



And what you'd expect when you ask Kristin Kreuk to act? You don't get shit. I already said from the beginning, if you're gonna cast Kristin Kreuk, make sure you show more of her legs than her trying to act like she's sad. It's like asking Megan Fox to be in Transformers deliver a serious line than just show us her boobs.



And while we're on the subject of bad acting. How bad was Chris Klein's acting in this? He kind of reminded me of the guy from Garbage Day cause all he does is speak in the same intense tone with the same intense face and he thinks that is acting. I mean, this guy's acting was so bad that it was good. I laughed my ass off through the whole film every time he comes on screen cause this guy is just downright ridiculous. What we need now is a movie where all we have is Chris Klein reciting Shakespeare monologues. Now that would be a funny movie.



Oh and it really helps build tension in the movie when the main villain is the guy from Desperate Housewives. This is such a lazy choice casting him as Bison. What the fuck? He comes off more like a businessmen man than a leader of Shadaloo. I'm barely even afraid of him, matter of fact.. I don't even feel him as an antagonist cause he is just such a weak character in the film.



You know what? All this talking about this turd is really getting my blood pressure high thinking about how much time I wasted being excited that this shit was coming out. The only thing I can do now I self medicate and look at these...






I feel no pain no more.

RATING: 2/10

NicholasC

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li

I’ve always been a fan of the Street Fighter game. I haven’t bothered to watch the original film that came out back i nthe late 80s, though, I will soon enough. It can’t be any worse than this. There is a reason this was released when it was and not during a time when it could really make some bucks.
When I heard they were thining of doing films on the characters from Street Fighter, I was excited. As with many video game characters, each has a very interesting backstory. The problem is getting that story to translate well onto the big screen and getting the right people for the parts. Chun-Li is an interesting character, although, for me I can count on one hand how many time I’ve beaten her. Still, I wouldn’t have picked her to be first, I’d have gone with M.Bison, Ryu, Guille, or someone of that caliber. Still, the story is not this film’s downfall, but rather the atrocious acting from two of the leads.
Kristin Kreuk, who apparently is from Smallville, somehow won the role of Chun-Li. Good for her for winning the part and all, but I would have given it to a more Asian actress, such as Maggie Q, Kelly Hu, etc. That’s just me, though. Kreuk is very wooden and unbelievable as Chun-Li. For someone who loses her mother and dad is missing, you’d think there’s have been some emotion going on, but nothing. Even after she is reunited with and watches her dad get killed, there is little to no emotional depth to her. The narration was even worse. If I wanted to hear monotone speaking, I’d listen to Ben Stein. Kreuk just made this film painful for me.
Another bad acting performance comes from Chris Klein. Look, this guy has come along way in his career, but someone needs to advise him to take better roles. Now, he may be a fan of the game, so taking this one may have just been because of those feelings. Klein, though, has to give his worse performance on screen I’ve ever seen from him. I’ve seen better acting from elementary school theater productions. Not to mention his character seems to be just thrown in there to throw some sort of subplot into this already convoluted movie…I’ll get to that in a bit.
Not all the acting was bad, though. Neal McDonough steals the show as M.Bison. He makes this thing watchable, that’s for sure. On top of that, his accent seems authentic, even if I can’t place where it is exactly he’s supposed to be from.
Robin Shou has a bit of an ironic role here. You may remember in Mortal Kombat, as Liu Kang, he was a bit of a rebellious “chosen one”. Here, he’s on the other side of that coin. His role as Gen has him teaching Chun-Li various fighting techniques and whatnot to survive. I found a bit of humor in that. Like klein, he appears to be a lot smaller than he was in the role we know him best for, but his talent (acting and martial arts) has not dwindled at all.
Moon Bloodgood is a nice piece of eye candy for those of us that are not really attracted to Kristin Kreuk. Her role, though, isn’t that big, and actually involves that convoluted subplot that really doesn’t need to be in this thing. Come to think of it, she might have made a good Chun-Li.
Michel Clarke Duncan fits Balrog to a ‘T’ and Taboo from the Black Eyed Peas shows up as Vega. Both characters though seem to be thrown in just to let the viewers have some characters from the game.
This film has too much potential to be this bad. Everything is in place for it to succeed, except two things. The afforestation bad acting and the convoluted subplot involving Interpol and trying to catch M.Bison’s crime syndicate. Now, I understand they had to stick something in there to play up the bad guy role of Bison and all, but this just felt tacked on and pointless. Also, they spent way too much time on the early years of Chun-Li. Obviously, this is an origin story, but people aren’t watching it to see drama and a little girl hanging on her dad for 30 minutes. We want some action, and there just wasn’t enough in it for me.
Video games just don’t make good movies 90% of the time. There are a few exceptions. Of course, it wasn’t that long ago that the same could have been said for comic book movies. All it takes is the right one to catch on. Unfortunately, this is not it, and may very well be the first and last of the origin films. I haven’t heard of any more in the works. As you can tell, I’m not fan of this picture, and kind of knew it wasn’t going to be any good before I even popped it in the DVD player, but I still watched it anyway, hoping I would be wrong. As I always say, you should watch and make your own decision, you’ve just read my opinion.

http://thankyounetflix.wordpress.com

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