Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
Kristin Kreuk delivers a solid Chun-Li and Robin Shou a great Gen. However, this is overshadowed by the nerve-grating acting of Chris Klein as Charlie Nash and the kind features of the supposedly evil dictator M.Bison (Neal McDonough).
The initial story of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is one of revenge. The cliched tale told in many a Kung-Fu movie of the child who has a loved one taken from him/her and their story to grow stronger in order to exact revenge and re-establish their honor. On the surface, this is what we get but there is an underlying tale within this movie that made it a bit more special. There is the tale of the poverty-stricken versus their well-off masters. The true story is about a little rich girl who is given a gift by a stranger. The gift of having an experience outside of one’s establishment and comfort zone. Little Chun-Li starts off as very much a princess but is made to live within the slums and become a hero to it’s people.
As a Chun-Li user in the Street Fighter series of games, this made sense to me as her video game stage always depicts her countrymen cheering her on as she fights in the street. The background is a poor Chinese market and on initial view of Kristin Kreuk in her silk jammies learning Wushu with her rich dad, you would wonder how she got from point A to point B. What made Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li good for me was the stories themselves. Though the execution of said stories were average at best, on paper you really can see why an M.Bison would arise and why a Chun-Li would be there to stop him.
Charlie Nash (Chris Klein) is probably the main reason for the bad box office feedback by movie-goers and also my inability to really get into the acting. His campy style of delivering the already bad lines, combined with his “I want some of that Moon BloodGood ass” glances at Detective Maya Sunee are pretty bad to say the least. Robin Shou as Gen was a positive spark to the film. Having already seen him in the other fighting game movie Mortal Kombat, I knew his Kung-Fu would be impressive. Kristin Kreuk is lovely and tried very hard to make this her movie, unfortunately for her, the goofy choices of actors and horrid writing has tainted her debut as the “strongest woman in the world”.
The Chun-Li I know from the video game series is strong, extremely confident and has an air of innocence even whilst kicking your ass a thousand times. The Chun-Li Kristin brings to the screen is all of these things but her innocence is long gone and she lacks the leg power to deliver the special moves that the heroine from the game packs. But let’s pause and consider. The movie takes place prior to even the first Street Fighter, so we can assume the beautiful skinny girl will hit the squat rack hard and come back as a roundhousing femme fatale. I can accept that, and Kristin really owned the character as much as she could, given the horrible lines she was made to deliver.
If you are a fan of Chun-Li, note I said Chun-Li not “fan of Street Fighter” because Balrog, Bison, Nash and Vega are very,very bad in this movie. With the exception of Neal McDonough who seemed as if he wanted to laugh out loud at the script in every scene, the main “fighters” will piss off fans of the video game. If you are a Chun-Li fan and you avoided the theater like I did, you may want to rent or buy this DVD. She even does a bad variation of the spinning bird kick – but c’mon it’s meant to be cheesy right? Or is it?
STAR RATING: (6/10) ★★★★★★★★★★
Filed under Action, Adventure, Thriller · Tagged with chris klein, chun li, kristin kreuk, micheal clarke duncan, moon bloodgood, neal mcdonough, robin shou, street fighter series
