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Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li
2009; directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak

Over the eleven years of Hong Kong Film Net's lifespan, your friendly neighborhood semi-drunken reviewer has been known to love two things: beer and kung fu. Even after being armed with a few tasty beverages beforehand, The Legend of Chun Li's half-ass display of kung fu still looked terrible. This film needs to be avoided like the black plague.

Chun Li

It can often be hard to pinpoint a statement like that, but in this case, it's exceedingly easy. The reason why? Two words: Chris fucking Klein, who personally delivers the cinematic equivalent of a Al Qaeda "dirty bomb" with his abysmal performance here. But, sadly, that's only the biggest reason to not watch this movie. There's so much wrong going on here that it baffles the mind to wonder why the hell this picture was ever made in the first place.

Chun Li

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li chews up and craps out any and every thing Street Fighter fans have come to know and love about the games. Bison (played by Neal McDonough) is an Irish dude that spouts off crud from a Lucky Charms box. The "psycho power" that has come to make Bison known and feared in the game world is reduced to a CGI wack-off. And his "man-servant" Balrog (Michael Clarke Duncan) doesn't fare all that much better. He spends a good amount of screen time shooting guns. What the hell? I thought he was supposed to be a tough boxer.

Chun Li

And Vega? Yeah, the masked one doesn't fare too well here. The much-anticipated match-up between him and Chun Li is literally over with in about thirty seconds. It probably doesn't help that he's played by Taboo from the goddamn Black Eyed Peas, but honestly, no one in this film fares all that well. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li sucks ass. I'm sorry for that uncouth description, but it is what it is. A huge layer of undenying suck. I threw my $5 at the screen and it felt wasted. I probably should have knew better when I saw that Kristin Kreuk was playing Chun Li. There's over a billion people in China -- couldn't the producers have found an actual Chinese girl to play Chun Li?

Chun Li

Of course, all this talk of story and acting would be all for naught in an action movie if the fisticuffs were up to snuff. Well, dear readers, don't worry. The fight scenes in Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li are simply god-awful. Seriously, I've seen episodes of UMAC Masters that had better fight co-ordination. B-list Hong Kong action director Dion Lam needs to stick with Steven Seagal's pudgy ass. A couple of people look decent (not surprisingly, they're Hong Kong vets like Robin Shou and Josie Ho) but the rest of the cast is so hidden behind obvious wirework, CGI, and quick editing that it's not even really worth calling the fight sequences "action" scenes, since there's so little actual excitement generated during them.

Chun Li

So yes, if you haven't guessed by now, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li is only "legendary" in the sense of how completely and utterly awful it is. In a movie like this, I'm not too picky. All I want is a good-looking woman kicking ass. This film couldn't even deliver that, plus it gives us Chris "go back to Amercian Pie" Klein assaulting the audience with his Keanu Reeves on qaaludes level of acting. This is not a good movie, it is not a "good" bad movie, it is just a flat-out bad movie that should never sully your eyeballs.

RATING: 3

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