Review of Street Fighter (1993) by Stuart K — 16 Apr 2013

After the success of Capcom's Street Fighter games in the late 1980's/early 1990's, it was only a matter of time before Hollywood came calling. Directed and written by screenwriter Steven E.

de Souza (48 Hrs. (1982), The Running Man (1987) and Die Hard (1988)), the film version is a glorious mess, but nowhere near the disaster that Super Mario Bros. (1993) was, and it's a cheesy action film which goes into the so bad it's good catergory.

In South East Asia, the country of Shadaloo is run with an iron fist by drugs lord General M. Bison (Raúl Juliá), has captured several dozen humanitarian workers, and demands that Allied Nations Colonel William F.

Guile (Jean-Claude Van Damme) gets a $20 billion ransom for their release, or he will kill them. But, no-one knows where Bison is hiding out, and Guile is in for the mission because his peacekeeper friend Carlos Blanka (Robert Mammone) is one of those captured by Bison.

So, Guile and his assistant Cammy (Kylie Minogue), set about finding a team to take on Bison and his men, but they have to find where he is first. This is a very silly film, and it's impossible to take any of this seriously, but that doesn't matter, as it's just a bit of cheesy fun, with Van Damme doing what he does best, and Juliá nearly steals the film as the psychotic yet charismatic baddie Bison, it's tragic that this was his final film.