Just a warning, this review is full of spoilers. I’ve added a cut to keep from ruining the movie for people who have not yet seen it. Though I use the term “ruin” lightly.

If anyone who goes in to see Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li expects to see an awesome video game movie, they haven’t seen any video game movies in the past 15 years. As illustrated in my preview, I went in with low expectations when it came to the movie following the Street Fighter canon. I was, however, going in with high hopes that this would be a fantastic martial arts action movie. Alas in that, is where I met disappointment.

The first action sequence of the movie starts off quite strong; a scene that I’d used in my mind to set the bar for the rest of the film. In this scene, Bison, Balrog, and their goons bust into Chun Li’s family home to abduct her father. Apparently, Chun Li’s dad is no chump. He fires the bottom of a wine bottle into an attackers face by smacking the end of the neck. He then thrusts his wine-soaked hand into a candle–igniting it–and proceeds to fling the fire at other attackers. Even though he’s overwhelmed by the end of the fight, it was exciting enough to feel safe in what was to come.

Unfortunately, this is where the action peaks. Every other fight scene to follow is typical of American cinema: Quick, tight shots that are too disorienting to follow and super slow motion on shots of supposedly impressive moves. The only other fight scene that comes close to being thrilling is the bathroom fight with the lesbian (whose role in Bison’s organization was never made clear). Though my heart may have already been racing at that point in the anticipation that she and Chun Li might make out. (They don’t.)

If you’re curious about the story, the plot mostly follows Chun Li’s journey of revenge and the odd choices she makes toward that end. She’s known since that frightful night as a child that her father was out there…somewhere. But until the death of her mother (whom suffered a terminal illness), Chun Li was quite content as a concert pianist. In fact, in the narrative voice over, Chun Li describes that it was her life-long dream to be a concert pianist, “but life never turns out the way we plan.” The next immediate shot is of her living out that dream. The movie could have ended right there and have been a satisfying close.

But no. After her mother passes, she remembers that she hates Bison and must find her father. Luckily she’s given a road map in the form of a mysterious Chinese scroll, supplied by Gen. Gen runs an underground organization who is also bent on bringing Bison down. What does the scroll say? We’ll never know. The woman that Chun Li takes it to for a translation only tells her that she’s supposed to go to Thailand to meet Gen for training.

Unable to locate the illusive Gen, she maintains focus of her overall goal to not only defeat Bison, but also rid the streets of the daily crime she finds so disgusting. As her course of action, she takes one of three choices:

1. Invest her abundant family wealth into politics and community-building organizations.
2. Enroll in the police academy, clean up the streets as a cop, and eventually join Interpol.
3. Abandon all her life’s assets to live homeless as a Bangkok gutterpup.

She chooses C.

Eventually, Chun Li meets up with Gen, who tries to teach her the folly of being driven by anger…and how to make fireballs with her hands, a feat which never strikes her as bizarre.

Energized by new confidence, Chun Li continues her quest to find Bison and her father. Her first step is to learn as much about Bison as possible. Who he is. What he does. How he operates. To accomplish this, Chun Li hops into a public internet cafe, looks at two websites, and runs out satisfied with her findings.

Chun Li uses this information to track down people who are connected to Bison who may know his latest schemes. She applies her newly-extended martial arts training to beat information out of his cohorts, Batman-style. The most crucial tip she learns is that Bison is expecting an important, secret shipment to arrive, nicknamed “White Rose”.

Meanwhile, we also get to see Bison’s latest plot unfold. Bison’s still a high-ranking mob boss, who is not exempt from the cliche scene of gathering all his rival mob bosses together, claiming “All your base are belong to us,” and then murdering them en masse. His master plan isn’t one of world domination or even becoming the deadliest fighter in the world. Bison’s main ambition: Real estate. Apparently he’d watched the Superman movies and figured Lex Luthor might be on to something. Bison wants nothing more than to acquire all property in Bangkok so that he can tear it down for new, high-priced housing. The monster!

Bison’s character is a complicated one in this movie. The more he spoke, the more I noticed a strong Irish accent. I wasn’t familiar with his actor, Neal McDonough, but I’d assumed that he was Irish (he’s not) and just couldn’t shake the accent in order make Bison just a generic white guy. I was further confused when they kept mentioning that he’d grown up on the streets of Bangkok–perhaps the emerald shamrock hills of Bangkok? Later in the film, Bison’s origin is revealed as being an orphaned baby of Irish missionaries left to grow up in the streets of Thailand. That doesn’t help the confusing accent since there’s no way he’d have an Irish accent if he were orphaned as an infant.

Furthermore, we learn that Bison didn’t climb his way up the ladder of organized crime by being the sharpest, toughest crook in town. Suddenly magic gets involved. As a young man, Bison takes his pregnant new bride (adorned in a white, rose-themed dress fit for a princess) to a mystical cave where he transfers his conscience into the soul of his unborn daughter. By this, he can now be as ruthless as is necessary to build his evil criminal organization. We never hear about this woman again.

Throughout the movie, there’s a subplot around two Interpol agents, hot on Bison’s trail. One is Charlie Nash, a character from Street Fighter Alpha. Other than that fact, the entire point of their subplot is for the audience to acknowledge that these are two very attractive people. That’s about all they offer.

After deciding that he’d underestimated Chun Li, Bison sends off his most deadly assassin, Vega, to kill her. For an assassin, he’s very loud; about as stealth as Darth Vader. He and Chun Li fight for 2 minutes, where he’s beaten faster than some street thugs from earlier in the movie, and is never seen again.

Late into the movie, Chun Li is captured by Bison. Up until this point, Bison has needed her father to establish important business connections in order for Shadaloo to grow. Bison keeps him under his thumb by allowing him to see surveillance of Chun Li and promising to keep her safe. However, once Chun Li is captured, he has no problem taking the supposed keystone of his criminal operation and snapping his neck in front of his daughter’s eyes. Chun Li, now angry, escapes to thwart whatever Bison intends for this “White Rose” and avenge her father’s death.

It turns out that the “White Rose”, as his true love’s dress foreshadowed, is his daughter. The same daughter that contains his conscience and could be his only weakness. Gen and Chun Li team up with the Interpol agents to storm Bison’s lair and rescue her…even though Bison doesn’t seem to have any intention to harm her. In fact, Bison cherishes his daughter and goes to great lengths to protect her.

Halfway through this scene, when Chun Li and Gen learn that the “White Rose” is Bison’s daughter, they regroup with the Interpol agents. Chun Li quickly informs the team about Bison’s daughter. She explains, “Her name is Rose; we have to save her!” I immediately thought, is it?? The girl’s name is actually never mentioned in the movie, especially up until that point. If Chun Li is right, that was a really good guess! Though it took a minute for it to dawn on me that this was of course, reference to the character Rose, also from Street Fighter Alpha.

Gen and Bison eventually have their own face-off, but Gen only softens Bison up before he escapes.

But no, this is Chun Li’s big fight. The two trade their share of blows, but inevitably Bison gets dizzy. This is when Gen calls to Chun Li, “You know what you have to do!” Given the actor that plays Gen, I was hoping that instead he’d cry, “Finish him!”

This is when she waves her hands to form a ball of energy and fire it at Bison. Strangely, all it seems to do is knock him over the edge of the building and onto an overhang below. In a fraction of the time it took for her to charge the fireball (as Bison stood in wait), she could have just as easily accomplished this by running at him and giving him a hard shove.

All this time, we’re still on board with the setup of Bison’s magical connection with his daughter and we expect Chun Li to find a way to give him back his conscience. In the end, that setup meant nothing because Chun Li instead opts for simple revenge. She murders Bison in cold blood, but not before waiting for “Rose” to arrive and see her father’s head spun backward before her very eyes. So that’s the moral message we walk way with from this movie: Revenge is what makes someone a hero.

As the film winds to a close, Chun Li exchanges words with Charlie, nodding toward “Rose” and asking that he insure that she’s allowed a normal life. But who can have a normal life after witnessing their father gruesomely murdered in front of them? Chun Li will be lucky if “Rose” doesn’t decide in a few years to come take her ass down!

From there, Chun Li joins Gen’s Order of the Web, spreading peace and inspiring strong communities. Gen then approaches her with a flyer about a Street Fighter tournament, mentioning some reputational fighter named Ryu. She declines the offer to enter, but it still serves as the open door for a potential sequel. Somehow, I don’t see that happening…

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 1st, 2009 at 1:08 am and is filed under Reviews, Street Fighter, TV & Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.