Street Fighter
It would be easy to dismiss Street Fighter as just another video game action adaptation similar in scope and style to the recent Mortal Kombat film. And it is, approaching its material with a similar wry irony in a constant state of ‘can you believe this?’ at war with a desperate desire to please the very fans who want to take it seriously, as much as Ryu (Koji) wars with his own inner darkness or Ken (Centineo)’s conflict with Ryu over shared envy of the other’s gifts or … any of many different conflicts stuffed into a two-hour running time. Street Fighter, like its own conceit, is trapped in a tournament of its own making pitting plot against plot against plot against, an endless array of combat with no victory for anyone.
Beginning in 1987, the year of the first game’s release, in one of the gorgeously animated sequences reserved for the film’s various flashbacks, Ryu defeats champion Sagat to become the best fighter in the world, in the process unlocking the evil demon Akuma (Anoa’i) who pushes Ryu towards more violence and evil. After their master is killed the pair split up, Ken becoming a reality TV darling while Ryu disappears until evil tyrant M. Bison (Dastmalchian) starts the tournament up again to draw Ryu out so that he can capture the fighter and the drain him of the dark energy he taps into to fuel his own personal power and ambitions. Pulling in some of the most unique and dangerous fighters in the world to cover up his ultimate ambitions, the only thing that might stop him is CIA agent Chun Li (Liang) who has gone undercover to revenge herself on Bison for her father’s murder. But none of them may have contended with the experiments Bison has been doing on a strange individual (Momoa) in his dungeons and …
You get the idea. The various one sentence backstories of the game characters that were dashed off to create a vague sense of world-building have been transformed into a bible which can’t be deviated from as the filmmakers try to put everything Street Fighter they can into their Street Fighter movie, far more than it can ultimately hold. With no defining authorial vision or editorial control, the film is pulled in multiple directions simultaneously, ending up with two protoganists who are mostly at odds with each other and two antagonists with their own plans and a tone which ping pongs between these poles and never settles on something final. Director Sakuria, who came up working on Eric Andre’s comedy show, has solid comedic instincts and wants to instill Street Fighter with them which is fine, except that he wants to instill it with everything else, too. No solid direction is ever selected, reducing the impact of every move it tries.
Some of it is knowingly living in the shadow of the Jean-Claude Van Damme version of the film which has become a cult classic in its own right. It wants to take everything that people loved from that, sometimes verbatim, and also address every complaint about what that film did wrong, which produces more of a checklist of moments than a cogent film. Is every character from the game you really like in it as their recognizable game selves? Yes, most likely. Is all of the original lore of the game represented as the game explained it? Yes, most likely. Is there an actual fighting tournament the major characters actually participate in? Yes, most definitely. Just listing it out, it probably does sound like exactly what you’d want a Street Fighter film to be. But a film experience is more than just a list of elements, particularly which so much is limited to just being a checkmark.
On the good side Centineo can hold up the comedy elements and the action elements, and a lot of work has gone into making the fights and fighters themselves fit into the imagined Street Fighter world as well as possible. When the bell does actually ring it comes alive; Sakurai and his action team blend his own instincts and the fights needs into a satisfying whole that you can’t help but wish the rest of the film could contain. In between, however, those moments become weightless and meaningless because all of the film’s emotional muscle is being used by Ken and Ryu and the resentments between them. The various other characters of the sprawling ensemble show up intermittently for their fights or their monologues and that is all. Some, like Cody Rhodes’ Guile, manage to overcome those limitations and make you long for more screentime from them, but most others disappear or worse, like Dastmalchian’s Bison, are hopelessly miscast for what they are attempting.
Street Fighter is mostly an enjoyable mess, and probably the best Street Fighter movie so far. Moment to Moment it works far better than it has any right to. It just unfortunately adds up to very little almost by design, ending on a cliff hanger with only a little real catharsis and most of the major conflicts unfulfilled. Hopefully their bet pays off.
6 out of 10
Starring Noah Centineo, Andrew Koji, Callina Liang, Joe ‘Roman Reigns’ Anoa’i, David Dastmalchian, Cody Rhodes, Andrew Schulz, Eric Andrew, Vidyut Jammwal and Jason Momoa. Directed by Kitao Sakurai.