It's time to throw down our vodka bottles, dump the ash out of our shoes, and hustle off to church, for the Lord has clearly heard our prayers: a new Street Fighter movie is upon us.
I've killed myself nine times waiting out the last two decades to finally discover the story of kickmaster Chun Li's rise to infamy. Do you know how much cloning yourself costs? Lots. And when you're twelve years old and saving your allowance, it feels like ten times as lots. But it was just so frustrating! When Chun Li kicks, it looks like her feet are on fire! How does she do that?
But I'm being a jerk. As Ratatouille taught us, good things can come from anywhere, whether it's the original animated Transformers movie, a hokey '70s space opera called Star Wars, or a nine-time clone the size and shape of an elephant's bathtub. Video game adaptations like Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li aren't doomed to suck. In this case, it just happens to.
Back when she was a child, Kristin Kreuk's dad was disappeared by nefarious crimelord Neal McDonough. In that time, Kreuk's led a normal life as a pianist; McDonough has gone on to consolidate his stranglehold on the streets of Bangkok.
When Kreuk receives an ancient scroll, she learns McDonough's been keeping her dad captive all these years. She may be able to free him, but first she'll have to give up her cushy life, travel to the streets of Bangkok, and wait to be found by Robin Shou, the leader of a mysterious order devoted to defeating McDonough and his plan to level and sell the slums of Bangkok.
There's nothing that livens up a bunch of boring old street fighting more than political intrigue. Really, this could have worked — an adaptation of a brawler video game that doesn't involve an underground tournament is an artistic revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since that guy with the incredibly pronounced brow discovered you could mash up plants and smear them on cave walls — but The Legend of Chun Li fumbles this chance at depth like Fumbly Joe Butterhands, the famous NFL player so bad at holding onto things that he doesn't actually exist.
Much of the legend of Chun Li, as it turns out, can only be told through following the meathead adventures of two personality-free cops. Before Justin Marks' script dives headfirst into the thrilling investigation of McDonough's real estate fraud, it fails utterly to grab our attention by having Kreuk narrate the ins and outs of her everyday life.
It occurs to me that I rail against narration all the time, but I have a pretty good reason for that: it's almost always bad. Listening to a character summarize their life story is like reading the back cover of a novel. In Kreuk's case, it's like reading the aggressively bland fake diary she kept around so her parents wouldn't find the real one — the one that had any insight into her opinions, interests, emotions, or anything else that would have humanized her.
Then again, with the exception of McDonough's backstory, which is just plain good and crazy, nothing here escapes the feel of being lifted from a video game, from the unimaginative characters to Kreuk's training montages, which contain so much fake Eastern wisdom they sound like excerpts from the Tao Te Hooey.
For a fairly epic story, director Andrzej Bartkowiak doesn't drum up much excitement. He's okay when it's just a few people whaling hell on each other. When it comes to building the big struggle into something more, acceptable choreography can't carry that weight.
Not-bad fights are about all The Legend of Chun Li has going for it. That is, unless you've got a big thing for weak acting, annoying plot holes, and sitting in a chair wishing you were somewhere else.
That may make the movie sound worse than it is, but it turns out I don't care.
Grade: C-