Many of us will remember the first live-action movie of Street Fighter. You know, the one with Jean-Claude and Kylie? Well, they decided to try it again last year. I'm still not sure wether it was an improvement though. A good idea, sure, because I love Street Fighter, but an improvement?
The story revolves around Chun-Li (Kristin Kreuk, Smallville), who loses her father to Shadaloo (Pronounced 'shadolau'), a huge crime organization lead by a man named Bison (Neil McDonough, Band of Brothers) which is trying to take over Bangkok by force and pretty much succeeding to do just that.
When she's grown up, Chun-Li receives an ancient scroll from China, teling her to leave everything behind to go to Bangkok, where she will find a man named Gen* (Robin Shou, Mortal Kombat). Gen takes it upin himself to train Chun-Li so that she can help her bring down Bison. She'll also get her father back in the progress.
They're not the only ones though. Two Interpol agents, Maya Sunee (Moon Bloodgood, Terminator: Salvaton) and Charlie Nash (Chris Klein, American Pie) are also on Bison's tail.
Bison isn't that worried though, since he is backed up by Balrog (Michael Clarke Duncan, The Green Mile) and Vega (Taboo, from the Black Eyed Peas).
The story itself isn't one of the best ever written. Chun-Li is out for revenge, Gen teaches her to control her anger, and two (almost renegade) cops are trying to achieve the very same thing and eventually team up with the rest of the ass kickers. But as we've seen in both Transformers movies, you don't need a big storyline to make an awesome film. The reason I give this one a mediocre score is mostly the shoddy acting.
Even with names like McDonough and MC Duncan, it's hard to act out a badly written script. The lines come off as if they were copied from other action films and seem forced. Especially Klein's part as the bad ass cop is one that has been done thousands of times before, spewing lines we only get in cheap video games nowadays.
I guess that's mostly because this is the second full-length film screenwriter Justin Marks had written, and it's the first he's written alone. He probably likes the game and decided that it should have another chance to be on the big screen.
Personally, I totally agree. Street Fighter is awesome and it deserves more films, preferably ones like Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, but for now we have to make do with the Legend of Chun-Li. A legend that's not really that legendary.
