Yesterday, I went to Orchard Cineleisure to watch "Street Fighter: Legend of Chun-Li" with a friend. I didn't expect a 100% faithful portrayal here, and yeah even though there were a lot of cons in this film, I felt that it still retains the realism of the story in the Street Fighter games. The director and scriptwriter are to be blamed.
Good points...
- Our very own Edmund Chen playing Huang, the father of Chun-Li. Best part was, he didn't even need to go for any auditions!! Unfortunately, he got killed off midway through the film after a brief reunion with the grown-up Chun-Li. His fight scene at the first 5 to 10 minutes were quite impressive, to say the least. :-)
- Kristin Kreuk kicking ass as Chun-Li... we can still forgive her for her rather shaky command in Mandarin.
- Smokin' hot Moon Bloodgood as special forces agent Maya Sunee. Another ogle-worthy babe.
- Taboo from Black Eyed Peas as the ruthless Spanish asassin Vega. It certainly helped that he had a black belt in ninjitsu.
- Michael Clarke Duncan as the big-boned bruiser Balrog. Good thing he didn't need to wear that campy attire and boxing gloves.
- Robin Shou aka Liu Kang from the live-action series as Master Gen.
- Amazing choreography and decent fighting sequences. The Kikoken fireball used by Chun-Li and Gen was much more convincing than Ryu's blink-and-miss Hadouken from the 1994 film.
- Crisp and bright photographic scenery of Thailand, esp the slum regions. Ironically, the filming occurred around the time of the anti-Thaksin rallies.
Bad points...
- The plot was rather weak, and character development doesn't run smoothly.
- Poor Edmund kena killed by Bison rather unceremonially.
- No fighting scenes from Charlie Nash whatsoever, other than a few gunshots. Guile would not be so pleased.
- Neal McDonough as Bison was the biggest mistake ever in Street Fighter film history. Even Ken Lo from "Future Cops" (yes, that 1993 HK film starring Andy Lau, Jacky Cheung and other HK artistes) fares much better than him. Any hardcore Street Fighter fan would be greatly disappointed to see M. Bison as an averge-sized person dressed in a businessman suit, rather than a tall and muscular being in the military uniform as seen in the video games as well as the 1994 Street Fighter film. And who thought that Bison in this film is Irish!!
My thoughts: I bet that most of the Street Fighter fans would feel that the 1994 Street Fighter film starring Jean Claude Van Damme, Raul Julia, Kylie Minogue et al was more entertaining than this one (even though it as also quite trashy), esp since it featured more characters and a slightly better storyline. While I obviously feel that this film had met very little expectations, I'm actually glad that I chose to watch this film rather than stay away from it, like how I totally keeped off from the ultimate joke that is Dragonball Evolution, which strayed too far away from the comics.
Overall rating: 4 out of 10 stars. Not a total disaster in spite of harsh reviews. I'm quite sure that Dragonball Evolution is much crappier...
Next movie to watch out for... 12 ROUNDS starring John Cena!!!
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