Review of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009) by Steven V — 06 Nov 2009

It's a little surprising that the filmmakers opted for Chun-Li instead of the signature character of Ryu. Kristin Kreuk may be a looker and her personal grounding in gymnastics and martial arts do help, but she's ultimately let down by a weak plot and some very weak supporting characters.

As if the villains were good enough, being nothing but bland and uninteresting. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is a straight forward movie without much depth in its story and it's relatively lower production budget translates to many of the jazzy special prowess in the game being considerably toned down.

Perhaps director Andrzej Bartkowiak's intention was to have it more rooted to reality, but therein lies the danger see, because this movie has tremendous parallels with that of another super-powered movie called Elektra.

Both have recognizable female actresses in the lead role and they share a plot involving secret organizations, mystical healing, an experienced teacher to learn the ropes from and plenty of hokey martial arts.

Even the training sequence looks super summarized, uninspiring and filled with unremarkable, clichéd dialogue. This movie has an origin story and depending on which camp you're on, you may or may not agree with some of the tweaks made here to accommodate the film version of things.

Despite being called "Street Fighter", the fights here are nothing too fantastic or memorable and looks comfortably in place with many B-grade action movies out there, with the occasional lapsing into the crutch of having the fight scenes edited in double quick time.