Street Fighter

Street Fighter is a strange video game movie. The game is an amazing 2D fighter with a wide array of characters from different continents who battle it out for...something.

The Movie, surprisingly, has more plot than you would think. M. Bison (Raul Julia, in his final performance) is now portrayed as a megalomanical super villain who has dreams of causing collapse to the entire world, such as killing a large number of hostages unless paid a ransom worthy of Dr. Evil standards, creating a breed of super soldiers and kidnapping the Queen of England and create his own world based off of his image. Trust me, it is as silly as it sounds.

Lt. Guile (Jean Claude Van Damme) approaches the situation in that he has to save the hostages and hopefully put Bison on ice, once and for all, thus stopping his plans for world domination.

From there on in, the movie is basically an almost two hour fan service with various subplots with almost all the characters from the Street Fighter universe. Zangief and Dee Jay work for M. Bison as Muscle and Computer Technician, respectively. Chun-Li, Balrog and E. Honda are all out for get revenge and Ken and Ryu are professional fighters hoping to score a battle against the vain Vega and evil Sagat.

Like I said, the rest of the movie is nothing short of fan service, since all the actors deliver some truly awful one liners aside, Van Damme's Guile almost sounds like Tommy Wiseau ("The Room") when you close your eyes, and the whole plot itself is actually quite boring.

Well, why in the world would someone defend this movie then? I'll give you three reasons, two are part of the movie, and one is a personal thing.

1. Raul Julia's M. Bison. A villain who looks rather powerful should be given a great performance. While Raul Julia did die after this movie was over, there is no denying that he went out with a bang rather than whimper. His performance is laughably over the top, but at no point do you look at his face and see a man who seems to think he's in a movie, and as a result, he makes the movie quite amazing. If anything, he gives us a theatrical villain which, for his character, works very well.

2. There was a lot of room for potential here. Let's be honest, writing a movie is easy, but writing a good movie is hard. The director (Who is also the writer) took a fighting video game and crafted a movie out of it, and a fairly well done one at that. Sure, not in execution, but in originality, it works.

3. It was a movie from my childhood. I was a child of the 90's, and as such, I can remember my parents letting me watch this at a very young age, and it was awesome. Damn the Nostalgia factor, but it's what makes this movie really good. I can remember how intimidated I was in the final battle scenes, and how cool M. Bison was to me (in that over the top Saturday Morning Cartoon style of cool).

This movie is a very easy one to attack for just not being good, but understand from my point of view, even knowing how bad it is, having no character development, some truly cheesy one liners and awful performances, including Van Damme giving a performance that makes him sound like Tommy Wiseau if he smoked cigarettes for ten years and you closed your eyes real tight, I still like it.

It's cheesy, terrible and ridiculous, but all you need to know is that Raul Julia delivers some of the best lines for years to come, and you know you are dealing with a kind of cult classic when one of the film's greatest lines is, "This is merely superconductor electromagnetism. Surely, you've heard of it." In other words, go see this movie if you haven't already.

7/10.

It's really dangerous to make a movie out of a video game, especially when the characters in the video game are cartoony. STREET FIGHTER is a terrible movie. The characters are a joke, and ACT like it's all a joke. The movie looks cheesy (study Bison's "hovering" command pod - it's obviously hooked to some kind of crane), and committing the famous Street Fighter martial arts movies into live action just looks stupid. What do you expect from DeSouza when the only things he directed before were a "Tales From The Crypt" episode and some shows of "Bowling For Dollars"? (No joke) Even the few Van Damme fans that are still left (after he's made countless bombs like this) will be embarrassed for their onscreen hero.

I first saw "Street Fighter" in theaters with my older brother and a few of his friends, and, as a four year old, I was upset by the lack of hadokens, yoga fires, hundred hand slaps, and sonic booms. Now older and (slightly) more mature, I can point out some of these movie's flaws accurately. First off, the campy style, as funny as it may be, takes away from the gritty and dark attitude that video game of Street Fighter II conveyed. Too many one liners, and predictable reactions are present. POSSIBLE SPOILER ---When Bison tells orders Chun-Li be taken into his personal quarters, E Honda and Balrog struggle harder in the same cliché way most heroes do when a villain is taking a female member of the team---- Some of the choices for actors were also under par, like Van Damme being Guile. I understand he's a kick@$$ action hero, but the guy is not all American, which is what Guile was all about. The portrayal of Sagat was disappointing; he's supposed to be a terrifying 7 foot tall menace, not some weak looking failed businessman. Removing Fei Long altogether was understandable, but Blanka should've been more prominent, rather than some odd rehash of Charlie and the Brazillian beast. Making Dhalsim a doctor, with NO powers at all, does not do justice to the real Dhalsim. I liked this doctor, but I want to see Dhalsim! Some of the characters were okay though; Dee Jay made a surprisingly good villain, Bison was well chosen, and Zangief was hilarious, but that's about as good as it gets. This movie also lacked any special moves at all, I mean understand they were on a low budget, and it was nearly 12 years ago, but come on, you can have a corny movie with cool colors, a cool movie with no colors, but you can't have a corny movie with no colors and expect people to love it (colors means ha-do-kens by the way). The only move they tried to portray was Bison's psycho crusher, and that kind of failed. Although the game was amazing, this movie should only be watched if you're not expecting the glory of the game, and can take this crap lightly. I feel like a teacher who has failed a student...

Oh dear... I completely forgot that I watched this movie when it came out on theaters! I was a HUGE "Street Fighter II" fan and this movie was like a dream come true despite the fact that Guile was the main character; overshadowing Ryu and Ken. Still, I bought the idea and went to the theater with high expectations.

To be honest, the movie is not a disaster but it just didn't catch the vibe of the video game; it just didn't feel like "Street Fighter". The kung-fuesque action sequences were very interesting but didn't follow the greatness of the game. Mortal Kombat worked because it's characters were "real" persons while it was extremely complicated to get on the big screen real persons that were originally cartoons.

Also, the plot was very complex when the video game makes it very simple. Still I enjoyed the cheese factor of it. The producers and Director tried too hard to make it feel like the video game but they couldn't reach the objective. Sadly, this movie is remembered as one of the worst of it's kind. I'd say give it the chance to witness cheese at it's maximum.

R.I.P. Raul Julia.

STREET FIGHTER (1994)

This movie has aged surprisingly well. It's always been bad but now it's so bad that it's kind of amazing. Based on the kick ass video game the makers do a crappy job of trying to string together a plausible storyline. But it does manage to have some over the top action sequences and some truly cringeworthy moments like Ming Na Wen delivering her best Chun Li speech before fly kicking a charismatic Raul Julia as Bison. Van Damme is also pretty hot and fun as "super american" Guile. The movie is overly fun and best of all there's never a dull moment.

Budget: $35m Box Office: $99m

7.5/10