It still feels like yesterday when I got back from Woolworth’s, a now defunct five and dime, unwrapping my copy of Street Fighter II for the Super Nintendo with feverish haste.  Ryu and Blanka were my weapons of choice as I dominated the game on easy…only to be pummeled relentlessly by the computer on any difficulty setting higher than that.  Some years proceeding that event, the popularity of Street Fighter II caught the notice of Hollywood and efforts to turn the game into a full-fledged movie were put into effect. 

Film 

The live action film Street Fighter is commandeered by well-known actors Jean-Claude Van Damme and the late Raul Julia.  Let me just cut to the chase and say some things are best left untouched.  Don’t get me wrong.  Creating additional game sequels and adding more characters to the Street Fighter universe is a great thing, but making this into a movie was anything but positive.  The potential for greatness is always present.  Unfortunately we don’t even see a hint of such an attribute in this 1 hour, 42 minute film.

Van Damme plays the role of Guile, a sort of United Nations commander leading his forces into Shadaloo against the almighty general/dictator, M. Bison.  Meanwhile, actress Ming Na Wen, starring as Chinese tough girl Chun Li, is a street reporter trying to track down Guile for an interview.  Guile steps off his armored personnel carrier for a brief moment to humor Chun Li.  In all his macho-ness, Guile basically tells M. Bison on the air to go lay an egg (I’m keeping this article PG-13 rated, folks; use your imagination).

Meanwhile, best buds and martial arts experts Ryu and Ken find themselves face to face with Thai martial artist Sagat and his pretty boy goon, Vega.  Right when Vega and Ryu are about to go toe to toe, Guile and his army bust through the walls and place everyone under arrest.  From that point, Guile enlists Ken and Ryu to aid the AN (an equivalent of the United Nations) and stop Bison’s warring madness.  Expect to see all the characters from the Street Fighter II Turbo game here; Cammy, T. Hawk, Dee Jay and so on.  Round 1…Fight!

Video 

Who forgot to clean the sand off the lens??  There was enough grit in this movie to make your own beach.  In past reviews, I have pointed out how there were some grainy scenes but they were greatly outnumbered by the amount of crystal-clear scenes.  Take that concept and flip it on its head for Street Fighter. The quality visuals were so few and far between in this movie that I didn’t know if I was seeing bad images because I left my glasses at work today or if the quality was truly that poor.  Sadly, the quality was that poor.  Did I mention this displays in 1080p with a VC-1 encode?  It doesn’t matter.  I’ve seen home movies from the 1960′s look crisper than this film.

Audio 

My ears got to experience the most prominent highlight of the film.  Please do not let me get your hopes up based on that sentence though.  The audio was adequate.  It will not knock your socks off and featured a few very obvious off-track recordings in terms of the dialogue.  Explosions were heard but did not excite the senses.  The connections of the fighters’ kicks and punches were quite weak and uninspiring.  You can hear plain as day that someone is getting beat on, but it has a way to go before trying to immerse the viewer in the experience.

Special Features 

The features are somewhat plentiful and display in 1080i/p and 480i/p, though the high definition visuals in the extras are quite limited.  The runtime of these extras is displayed at the end of each description below.

• Street Fighter IV game trailer – A very impressive trailer for the upcoming Street Fighter IV video game, due out on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 on 2/17/09 (3:08).
• Street Fighter IV teaser trailer – This is a very quick ink-and-pencil animated featurette advertising the upcoming video game (:36).
• Street Fighter IV anime trailer – Here we get a sneak peak at the Street Fighter cartoon that tells more about the latest story of the forthcoming game (3:12).
• The Making of Street Fighter – Quick video and sound bites are presented in this collage that doesn’t go into too much detail about how the film was assembled (5:56).
• Outtakes – These are non-humorous scenes from the film that had to be re-shot (3:08).
• Deleted Scene #1 – E. Honda, Chun Li and Balrog are seen carrying out an ‘explosive’ plan against Bison and Sagat (:56)
• Deleted Scene #2 – Cammy and Chun Li duke it out in a circus tent (1:13).
• Storyboard Sequences – This extra cycles through stills of the storyboards without any kind of narration or audio.
  • Boardroom – approximately 2:00
  • Prison Break – approximately 2:20
• Video Game Sequences
  • Super Street Fighter II – It’s a quick video of the game as we watch Guile beat up on Bison (:32).
  • ‘Street Fighter the Movie’ Game – Here we see video of a street fighting game that bears a striking resemblance in graphics to one of the earlier Mortal Kombat games.  Only here we have digitized images of Jean-Claude Van Damme fighting Raul Julia. (:46).
• Cyberwalk
  • Recruiting Center – Propaganda to join the cause of M. Bison (just over 2:00).
  • Crisis in Shadaloo – The opening sequence of the film when Chun Li is trying to track down Guile for an interview.  I don’t really see why this is an extra (3:46).
• BD-Live
• Commentary with Director Steven de Souza

Final Thoughts 

Blanka looked ridiculous.  The acting was awful, the direction was lost and Dhalsim never threw a punch…not even from the other end of the room as he did so well in the game.  I was longing to hear just one time, “Yoga Flame!”  Instead we got Dhalsim the scientist with a full head of hair working as a prisoner in Bison’s lab.  Did I mention Blanka looked ridiculous?

This movie was much more of a shootout at the OK Corral than it was street fighting.  I’d like to also add that so much of the casting and storyline was botched.  E. Honda was still a sumo of course but no longer from Japan.  He’s Hawaiian now.  The nearly 7-foot tall Sagat was played by Wes Studi (Dances with Wolves).  Studi’s not a bad actor but doesn’t have the stature to measure up to Sagat’s height.  The one character that looked most like its video game counterpart was Vega, but even if you lost all your fingers you could still count his lines in the film on one hand.  My final thought on Street Fighter? Stay away.

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