Hello and welcome to ToriJ's Video Game Reviews. Last February I reviewed Street Fighter II for Fightbruary, but before that I vowed to review the movie adaptions of the games I played whenever I got around to actually playing them, leading me to the 1994 film directed by Steven E. de Souza (interesting name): Street Fighter!
We have Jean-Claude Van Damme, we have Raul Julia, we have Asian characters played by REAL Asian people! At least for the most part. Why is E. Honda Hawaiian? Did they get their casting director from the WWF?
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My beret is better than Jill Valentine's!
The movie starts off with a news broadcast by Chun-Li (just go with it) explaining that the Allied Nation Forces led by Colonel Guile are fighting against the militant of General M. Bison in Shadaloo City. A.N. relief workers were captured by Bison who demanded twenty billion dollars for their release. Guile uses Chun-Li news broadcast to goad Bison into responding so they can track the signal back to his base. Unfortunately, Bison cuts off before they can discover his whereabouts. During this exchange between Guile and Bison Guile has some strong words for the General.
“Dick head!” That's right, you read it here, Colonel Guile calls General Bison... a dick head! Careful, Colonel, you might provoke him! Can you imagine if we had this guy talking with other terrorist leaders? Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. “Dick head!” Ayman al-Zawahri. “Dick head!” Sirajuddin Haqqani. “Dick head!” We should just hire him to be our terrorist negotiator from now on. He has a gift.
But like an idiot he says the name of one of the hostages in Bison's possession indicating that they're close and Bison manages to put two and two together taking Carlos “Charlie” Blanka to the lab to be experimented on. Thank you, Guile! You're the best! Guile is of course less than thrilled they were unable to track the signal and takes it out on Chun-Li coming across as misogynistic, when in reality he just doesn't like journalists.
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Ah, before cage fighting became popular.
We're then taken to Ryu and Ken who try to con Viktor Sagat by giving him fake weapons. Ryu looks fine, Sagat looks fine, even Vega looks fine. He doesn't wear his mask as much as I would like, but he took it off in the game so I'm not going to be picky. I know Bryon Mann isn't Japanese, but at least they got the race part right. Ken looks nothing like his video game counterpart. Damian Chapa looks more like he should be playing Johnny Cage then Ken, what the hell?
This whole scene and the following cage match is just ridiculous. Sagat's men hits Ryu and Ken with soft balls, a woman drops a Vega's sign when she sees Ryu shirtless, and Guile drives into the place in a smurfing tank! Was this meant to be a comedy? What does it say on IMDb?
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I knew it! Would have been funnier if it said drama, but I'll take it.
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You look good in blue, boys.
Ryu and Ken gets a chance for freedom if they can infiltrate M. Bison's base, so they stage a prison break with Sagat and fake the death of Colonel Guile in order to earn his trust. A ploy that is discovered by Chun-Li after finding him in the morgue. Boy, he really is committed to the bit. Was he just waiting for somebody to come by so he could scare them half to death? Chun-Li reveals that she isn't just a reporter, but has actually been tracking M. Bison down for years for revenge. At least they got her storyline right. But Guile decides that there's no time for personal vendettas besides his own and has her arrested, only for her to escape leading to even more strong words from the Allied forces: “What a screw up!” Oooooh! Play us off, Guile. “Dick head!”
This time around Chun-Li is paired off with E. Honda and Balrog who all want revenge against M. Bison. So much in fact that they're not against driving a car bomb into them killing hundreds of people. Vengeance: bringing people together since the beginning of time! Now, I know what you're thinking, wasn't Balrog one of the bad guys? Well, he was, but they changed it. I'm not too bothered by this change. If that was the best way to add Balrog into the film then whatever. What are their motivations? Bison killed Chun-Li's father, E. Honda's sumo career was ruined, and Balrog's boxing career was ruined. Although specifics are never given on the last two.
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I cannot help but notice that you are standing on the sidelines. There will be no fence sitters in Camp Bison!
Eventually, Ryu and Ken gets inside the base at the expense of Chun-Li and her group building up to the grand finale. Though I'm not sure what the whole point of the infiltration was if they were just going to raid the place all along. Hell, had they stayed out of it Chun-Li would've gotten Bison killed, anyway. Problem solved!
Despite being reduced to a comedy, most of the characters look the part, and even those who don't plays them just fine. Unfortunately, Zangief is portrayed as a complete idiot because I guess big brutes somehow equal stupid henchman. The characters who get the biggest shaft has to be Dhalsim and Blanka. Dhalsim is nothing like his video came counterpart, and when he randomly adopts the attire from the game he dies! Blanka, the strongest character from the games equal only to E. Honda, gets all this buildup from being created and then he does smurf all! He chokes Guile, throws some Bison soldiers around, and then dies with Dhalsim. That's it. What a rip off!
Raul Julia may not be able to be as intimidating as game Bison, but I swear he's the only one having any fun in this movie, and he's a hell of a lot better as Bison than Neal McDonough. Whoever made that casting decision needs to go die in a fire. Every scene he's in is actually entertaining to watch. Raul Julia as Bison would've been great for something like Saturday Night Live or a parody. You know what? I think it's in all our best interests to just assume that this was meant as a parody of Street Fighter than an actual adaption because I'm having a hard time believing anyone seriously thought this was going to be good. Sadly, Raul Julia passed away two months before the movie was released. Unfortunately, Raul Julia would pass away from a stroke two months before the movie released. Even God didn't want him to be exposed to this crap.
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KICK HIM! KICK HIM!
The movie does have some pretty fun match ups at the end. You have Guile versus Bison, Ryu versus Vega, Ken versus Sagat, and Zangief versus E. Honda. A couple of them are leaned out to comedy like a Godzilla joke for Zangief/Honda, antics with a punching bag, and Guile banging Bison's head on a giant bell, but overall enjoyable. The ending of the Guile/Bison fight is pretty stupid as Guile could have avoided those flying charges of Bison's a lot sooner than he did, but now seems like a bad time to expert high quality from this film.
In a surprise twist, Bison manages to kill Guile, defeat the A.N. forces and takes Chun-Li as his love slave after he finally conquers the world giving the movie a surprisingly dark and depressing ending that contrasts the lighthearted comedy that accompanied it up to this point. NAH! The good guys win, bad guys lose, and everybody lives happily ever after. Except for Dhalsim, and Blanka, and Vega. However, Bison and Sagat did survive for the sequel that will never be.
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What the smurf kind of pose is that, Van Damme?
Is it a good movie? That depends on what your definition of good is. If your definition of good includes a well thought out plot with compelling characters and takes itself seriously, you're not getting that here. If by good you just mean something that you can enjoy watching for an hour and forty minutes, then actually, yeah.
Street Fighter is better than the Super Mario Brothers movie and while it's goofy and has plenty of bad parts, it's just entertaining enough to keep you through it at just how amazingly goofy it can be. There actually was SOME attempt at staying true to the original source material. They set this up for a release date around Christmas, so it's obvious what they were going for: a fun family film that kids could enjoy, and since a lot of us were kids when we were introduced to Street Fighter I'd say it balances out.
Try it
