Firstly, the title is completely misleading. Sure, it’s based on the Street Fighter games, and sure, it’s about Chun-Li and her tenuous connections to several other characters in the franchise, but it’s far from being a “legend”. It would be more accurate to call it “The Short Story Of Chun-Li Which We’ve Had To Stretch To Its Breaking Point To Make It Feature Length”. And to make matters worse, this movie, based on a fighting game, has very few fight scenes in it. It starts with a little family-values vignette, which is interrupted by Michael Clarke Duncan, doing the worst Mike Tyson impression ever, taking less than a minute to kick Chunners’ dad’s ass.
Pictured: a man who never reads the expiry dates |
Then some more boring story stuff, then another totally uninspired fight scene, etc. etc. And sandwiched in there somewhere is the worst actor in the history of cinema, Chris Klein, showing off the skills that have made him infamous.
"They said they'd call me for American Pie 2, but they never did..." |
A while later, we get Gen making a haduken look like the most boring thing in the world...
D-DFwd-Fwd-High Punch |
Bison speaking in a really bad Irish accent even though we’ve been told that he was raised in Thailand from infancy...
Not pictured: Raul Julia |
A scene in a nightclub where Chun-Li seduces Bison’s henchwoman before kicking her ass in the bathroom...
All-female remake of the volleyball scene from Top Gun |
Vega shows up looking like the bastard lovechild of Jason Vorhees and Wolverine (if male-on-male impregnation was possible, obviously)...
Steve's aluminium fetish was getting out of hand |
More boring story involving Chris Klein, and eventually, Chun-Li wrenches Bison’s head 180, he dies, no-one cares, the end.
"I can see my house from here!" |
From start to finish, this is the worst video game adaptation since Mario Bros. and I’ve been struggling to figure out why... Is it the fact that it takes itself WAY too seriously? Yes. Is it because its based on a beat-em-up and yet there’s very little beating-em-up involved? Yes. Is it because of the sub-par acting and the fact that the baddie lesbian’s body guard is played by a Cokey Falkow lookalike instead of Cokey himself? Yes and yes.
The Cokester would be all over her by now... |
But the worst part of this entire fiasco is the decision to cast Kristin Kreuk as the lead character. She’s not a bad actress, as we’ve seen in Smallville and that blackhead cream ad she was in, but come on, does anybody believe this skinny bitch could kick anyone’s ass?
She looks like she'd have problems with a chocolate wrapper |