The Film
When it comes to truly terrible movies, you’ve got the ones that fall into the "so bad, it’s good" category and those that are more the "so bad, it’s so, so bad" type.
Street Fighter, based, in fact, on the second installment of the video game franchise (like the source material means anything for this kind of thing), falls somewhere between the two, but it’s definitely leaning toward the “no, it really is that bad” side.
There are a few moments in the film that provoke squeals of unintentional laughter – particularly amusing is General Bison’s (Raul Julia) tendency to dramatically whip his cape around – but this is a film that’s more awful than campy. Towards the beginning, I was overwhelmed with the opportunity for MST3K-style riffs, but as it dragged on, I found it hard to keep caring.
The great Jean-Claude Van Damme stars as Col. William Guile, the leader of a commando team commissioned by the Allied Nations (A.N., U.N., you get the picture). When Bison announces on television that he’s captured a number of A.N. workers in the fictional Asian city of Shadaloo and is holding them hostage, Guile and his team set out to take Bison down. Along the way, Guile will be helped out by his seemingly useless sidekick, Lt. Cammy (Kylie Minogue, truly awful), journalist-turned-badass ninja Chun-Li Zang (Ming-Na Wen) and aspiring hero Ryu Hoshi (Byron Mann).
Bison, meanwhile, has plans to dominate the earth by creating legions of genetically modified killing machines, but the single prototype he ends making in the film looks like a cheap Hulk knockoff.
Street Fighter has a steady stream of cheesy dialogue, hammy performances, ridiculous accents and costumes and an absurd premise – it should be camp movie gold. Unfortunately, it’s also got terrible fight choreography and a general lack of shooting know-how behind the camera. First-time director Steven E. DeSouza (somehow, that name seems perfect for the director of this film) doesn’t have much of a feel for fight scenes, dialogue scenes or any other kind of scenes.
Now I suppose for fans of the video games, the film has some added familiarity value that makes for a fun time. But there’s no denying, no matter how devoted you are to the Street Fighter franchise, this movie blows. That’s about all that needs to be said.
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