‘Street Fighter’ provides back story for video game
If you’ve ever wondered where Mario got his bow tie, or why Inky, Blinky and Clyde are so intent on reducing Pac-Man to pixels, then “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li†is the movie for you. For the rest, those for whom the idea of manufacturing an origin story for a video-game character seems mildly bonkers, Andrzej Bartkowiak’s film is a long slog with little payoff.
Arcade aficionados, as well as their long-suffering friends, spouses and roommates, will recognize the three-dimensional equivalents of “Street Fighter’s†dramatis personae: Kristin Kreuk as jump-kicking crime fighter Chun-Li, Neal McDonough as crime lord Bison, and Michael Clarke Duncan as his towering henchman Balrog (whose name is right out of “The Lord of the Ringsâ€). To them, the movie adds a pair of detectives on the trail of a mysterious underworld organization called the Shadaloo: Moon Bloodgood as a Hong Kong gang specialist, and Chris Klein as a floppy-haired Interpol agent who looks as if he rents himself out as a Sonny Crockett impersonator.
Chun-Li’s quest to take down Bison is spurred by her father’s kidnapping and abetted by Gen (Robin Shou), a martial-arts master whose training regimen involves ball bearings, circular saws and the fine art of flailing her arms around until a glowing ball of pinkish energy appears between them.
All of this, of course, is just stuffing, excelsior packed around hand-to-hand skirmishes. But considering that they’re the movie’s sole raison d’etre, the fight scenes are surprisingly lame. Bartkowiak gooses the action with wire-work and digital undercranking, but it can’t disguise the rote choreography of scene after scene in which Chun-Li dispatches a herd of attackers with a few well-placed whacks. It doesn’t help that Kreuk looks more like a yoga teacher than a fearsome warrior.
Even with the low expectations “The Legend of Chun Li†engenders, it still somehow manages to be a letdown.
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‘Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li’
MPAA rating: PG-13 for sequences of violence and martial arts action, and some sensuality
Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes
Playing: In general release
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