Review of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009) by Luis V — 24 Jul 2011

This is why a film should not be adapted from a video game. The film is a sequel to another video-game adaptation called Street Fighter, that being said we know that we are heading towards a disaster. The plot of this film is about Chun-Li a young pianist whose father is kidnapped by a dude named Bison. As Chun-Li grows she realizes who are the men whom captured his father and now she must learn martial arts to hunt down the men whom took a way his father. Chun-Li goes to Bangkok and finds how much terrible the citizens are living with Bison's Iron Fist.

The film is freaking terrible. Is not that there is a lot of action and little story, is that the action sequences are poor, dull and surprisingly boring. There's a scene in this movie in which the girl jumps from one house to another and you can clearly see the cable on top of her. None of the fight scenes made me say wow except at the climax when she breaks the neck of a person. That is it! Another scene is with Chun-Li fighting against another woman (whom supposedly is one of the greatest fighters in the video game) and Chun-Li only grabs her hair for like 5 seconds and instantly the lady gives up. There is no hype in this movie everything in this movie goes to fast or happens absolutely nothing.

The movie is short and they did something terrible with the pace. The film went just too fast for example that dad is fighting a couple of bad guys, they look really strong. Then Mr. Bison comes in, which looks as the weakest of all the bad guys, and the father instantly gives up. With no struggle at all, just like that he gives up. We don't see Mr. Bison fight until the end of the movie and he is supposed to be the Big Bad Boss of this entire movie but he isn't. He is not even menacing, he tells the protagonist: "You will not stop me." In the most hideous, dullest way I have ever seen in my entire life.

The problem with video-game films is that they look like video-games and we are not here to waste our money to watch video-games, we are here to watch movies and this is not a movie. Films should have characters, a plot, cool action sequences but this did not buy anything that had in this movie. The screenplay is just terrible up to the point you want to vomit. It did not explain everything what was going on and you felt completely alienated. Another problem with video-game films is that there's nothing fresh in them. Absolutely nothing. I mean is like I was watching another dumb and pathetic kung-fu movie.

What I like about this film is that it meet with my expectations. I thought this movie was going to be bad and it was a bad movie. What I like about this movie is that it had a narrator so that we don't get lost while watching this movie. The film has a story is about justice, about finding your father and don't let nothing stand in your way. This film could have been much better.

This film was directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak whom most of his films are about action movies. So don't expect to see a good film about this guy. He seriously need to get better on his movies, even do he is more of a cinematographer than a director. The directing was this film was really terrible up to the point that makes you want to leave the film.

I would recommend this movie to people that love video-game films because it lacks everything else. I mean if you like films with dull and boring action sequences then this is the film for you guys because this film really bored me to death.