So god awful that the previous version looks like Citizen Kane
Image Courtesy of IMPawards.com
Director: Andrzej Bartkowiak
Notable Cast: Taboo , Moon Bloodgood, Edmund Chen, Michael Clarke Duncan, Chris Klein, Kristin Kreuk, Neal McDonough, Cheng Pei Pei, Rick Yune
Generally it’s pretty hard to remake a bad film and make it excessively worse. The original Street Fighter game, based off the Capcom fighting game, featured Jean Claude Van Damme and was universally panned for good reason. With 15 years removed, another attempt at transferring the successful video game to film seemed appropriate in an era where the medium is ripe for translation to cinema. The problem is that Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li manages to mine depths of awfulness that even Van Damme would be envious of.
The film has a pretty straightforward plot. Chun Li (Kristin Kreuk) is a world class pianist with a heart of gold. With her father having long since disappeared, and with him her training in Wushu karate, she’s the bright light in her cancer-ridden mother’s life. With her mother’s death, and evidence that perhaps her father is alive after all, she leaves her native Hong Kong to go to Bangkok, Thailand, to try and find him. He’s in the clutches of the evil Bison (Neal McDonough), who is using him to gain a foothold in the criminal underworld. With his bodyguard Balrog (Michael Clarke Duncan), Bison is making his move to take over crime in Bangkok and serves up his enemies on a plate to Interpol detective Nash (Chris Klein) and native Bangkok detective Sunee (Moon Bloodgood).
Everyone seemingly wants to bring Bison down and the film centers around a package he’s bringing in to Thailand he has dubbed the “White Rose,” which has everyone involved wanting to use it for some aspect. And whereas normally this would be the focal point of two over-lapping stories (a woman trying to find her father and a pair of cops trying to bring down a crime lord) that would be somewhat entertaining, Street Fighter manages to bring it down to direct to DVD proportions by being laughably bad throughout.
This isn’t just a case of bad acting or a bad screenplay conspiring against a director. The film, which would be par for the course if it had been released directly to DVD, is just achingly bad across the spectrum. There are moments of drama that are more hilarious than they are emotional, never a good thing, and the film hits the point on the circle of badness that stops right before it gets good. It’s mainly in the acting, however, that the film gets undone.
Whereas there isn’t much to work with in terms of a script, the film’s acting is atrocious across the board that it undermines the film at key junctions. Chris Klein, who seems to be channeling his inner Seagal, seems to be having fun with the role by embracing every cop cliché imaginable with a zest only a bad high school actor could, and a haircut even Nicolas Cage would be envious of, but the rest of the cast is trying to play the material two ways: serious and boring. It may not be Shakespeare, and everyone in the film seemingly knows it, but there’s this look of defeat in their eyes that makes it hard to watch at times. It’s the “Fire my agent for agreeing to make the film” look and everyone seems to have it. Even Michael Clarke Duncan, who usually has some intensity for his usual “heavy” role, seems bored at a generic film. Kristen Kreuk, the star and sometimes narrator, is incredibly bored but doesn’t mind showing off that she’s in world class shape for the film.
It doesn’t help that the film’s action is boring and unoriginal. We’ve seen these types of watered down wire work and TV cop show style shootouts before and there is nothing original or bold put in to this latest Street Fighter incarnation. They’re competent but nothing more.
Anytime Chris Klein’s bad acting is an unintentional highlight you know you have an epically bad film. Avoid Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li at all costs.
