As I promised several weeks back, the Cap'n would bring SYWHT back with a bang, and believe me when I say Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li delivers. For once, even though I watched it so you wouldn't have to, you might want to consider queue-ing this stinker up. Just put on some nose plugs beforehand.
The Blu-Ray starts with the following trailers, to set the mood: X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Dragonball, and 12 Rounds (starring WWE Superstar John Cena and directed by Renny "Deep Blue Sea" Harlin). That should give you a pretty good idea of the quality you're in for. The top-billed "stars" are Kristen Kreuk, Chris Klein, Neil McDonough, Taboo (from the Black Eyed Peas) with an "And Michael Clarke Duncan" credit at the end. I'm not saying; I'm just saying is all...
(if it helps: Kristen Kreuk is on Smallville, Chris Klein was in.. uh, American Pie, Neil McDonough was the bad guy in Walking Tall, and Michael Clarke Duncan was in The Scorpion King.)
To answer the questions I asked (and many of you were probably wondering): yes, The Legend of Chun-Li is as bad as you'd think it was, and maybe worse. Plot points disappear and reappear for no apparent reason, characters die (or appear to die) only to show up again in the most lackluster ways, characters make decisions based on no logical criteria, and the film consistently feels like a B-Movie with an A-Movie budget. How they imagined this would kick off a Street Fighter franchise* is beyond me.
On the other hand, it is very entertaining for all of the same reasons. While not the worst movie I've seen this year, or even the most baffling-ly awful, Street Fighter manages to be dumb enough to keep you interested but not smart enough to disappoint. It's exactly the kind of arbitrary movie you'd put on with friends and kick back a few drinks to.
I'm not really sure how much we're supposed to cheer for heroes who kill the lead bad guy in front of his totally uninvolved-in-the-story daughter, or if I'm really supposed to understand why Charlie Nash (Chris Klein) is even in the movie, since he spends most of the running time kind of hanging around the plot. Actually, even when he is directly involved in the "Chun-Li getting even with M. Bison" story, it's only so he can shoot people and yell "Nash out!" into radios.
Truthfully, I'm not sure that I'm as onboard with the whole "give Charlie Nash his own movie" sentiment in most Street Fighter reviews. I do think that Chris Klein is pretty hilarious chewing scenery and delivering every line like he was preparing for the Golden Raspberry highlight reel, but much more of Charlie Nash would spoil a movie. It's almost better that he steals the film by having virtually nothing to do with the plot. If you stuck Klein's Charlie Nash into other movies he had no business being in, I might get behind that, but not his own movie.
For the most part, the actual plot doesn't make any kind of sense. Things happen either because a) they're convenient, or b) because a fight/shootout is necessary. Rather than walk you through the whole film, I'm going to bring up two specific point that demonstrate why this film is both a loser and a winner at the same time:
1) Chun-Li is a rich kid who may or may not be a concert pianist (the movie wants you to think so, but I'm 99% positive she's performing in front of a green screen with the worst "audience" painting ever). Her father is kidnapped/killed/something when she's young, leading to a ridiculous "Veangeance!!!!" stare and some kind of mysterious scroll when she's older. Her mother doesn't appear to age but instead dies of a mystery disease.
A wise woman tells Chun-Li she needs to "go to Bangkok." That's exactly what she says, but Chun-Li takes it to mean "give up everything you know and become homeless, wandering the streets until you get into a fight," which is exactly what happens. She then trains with a dude named Gen who teaches her how to throw fireballs. Until the fireballs, Street Fighter apparently was trying to be "realistic."
2) I mentioned Taboo earlier, because he plays Vega. At least he kind of looks like Vega, since he has a mask and claws, unlike Michael Clarke Duncan, who plays Balrog as Michael Clarke Duncan. Vega kills several people off-camera early in the movie and then disappears until he's summoned to kill Chun-Li.
The set-up for their "epic" battle is virtually nonexistent. Chun-Li is upset that Master Gen lost his necklace in an explosion (meaning that he must be dead), and is running around Bangkok. Then she decides to jump across rooftops, and bumps into Vega. At least, that's how the lousy editing makes it look. I guess maybe she sensed he was following, but there's nothing in the direction of this sequence to suggest A leads to B leads to C. It just happens.
Chun-Li and Vega fight (kind of), and she knocks his mask off. Instead of being disfigured or vain or something, he just looks like Taboo from the Black Eyed Peas, but Chun-Li says "No wonder you wear a mask. If I were as ugly as you I'd wear one too!", which is just odd. Then she jumps on him and knocks him out off-camera. We see her drop the knocked out Vega from a roof, where he's tied up by his feet but still has his claws!
Maybe we'll see Vega again? Nope. Not in this movie. At least Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li remembered to pay off the fireball, even if the CGI resembled Syfy Channel original quality.
I know it sounds like I'm bagging on this movie, but the truth is that you spend most of the time laughing at how inept this movie is. Whether it's the totally unexplained hookup between Chris Klein and Moon Bloodgood, the faux-lesbian club sequence that transitions into a strip club shootout, unwarranted c-sections, the really unnecessary reminders of the most obvious visual clue in the entire movie, or just Chris Klein staring past the camera and muttering one-liners that don't make sense, it's hard not to enjoy this kind of crap. It's bad, but far from unwatchable.
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li may not be Death Race, but just because you Won't Have To doesn't mean you shouldn't give it a try, provided you're in like-minded company with lots of alcohol.
Cap'n out.
* the end of the film sets up a "tournament" where Master Gen will find "Ryu something-or-other" that Chun-Li decides to sit out of. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess Fox will also sit out on this Street Fighter tournament too.
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