I really liked this film. But of course I knew it was going to be stupid and bad. With all the hate this movie is getting, I’m seriously starting to wonder, what did some of you think you were seeing? What made anyone think this film was going to be good? Here’s my spoiler free review.
This movie is good in the same way the original film was good. It’s not. But I laughed and had a blast and to me that’s far more important. It was great seeing so many of the characters on the big screen and better than they were in any previous version. The acting wasn’t great in this but again, I knew it was going to be campy because I have eyes and watched the goddamn trailer.
That doesn’t mean I can’t be critical of this movie though.
First off, this film tried to do too much. We had two storylines which can be fine, but there just wasn’t enough time. It’s not like this was a drama where each scene could be milked for all the plot progression it could handle. This is an action comedy based on a fighting game. There had to be a bunch of fights in this. So we had the M. Bison storyline and the Akuma storyline. True, they did have some overlap, I feel like this movie didn’t get to flesh out either story quite enough. The focus was mostly on M. Bison but the story never let you forget there was another plot point hanging around. I think what this film needed to do was change this up a bit, focus on the Akuma storyline in this film while peppering in some of M. Bison’s story, and then save M. Bison’s machinations for the sequel.
Another reason the story should have been edited down a bit is because there wasn’t nearly enough fighting. There’s one fight that’s mentioned but we never see and I would have loved to have seen that. This is a movie called Street Fighter based of a fighting video game and you’re not maximizing the number of fights we’re seeing? So not only was there not enough time for the two storylines, but there was too much story in general. Less talk, more fight.
David Dastmalchian is a very talented actor but even he couldn’t improve M. Bison in this film. That’s a third reason why the story needed changing. Who the hell was M. Bison? Yes, I know who he is, I played the games too, but I mean, who is THIS M. Bison, why does he have so many loyal followers, why are people scared of him? So that’s why the Akuma storyline needed to be the main plot of this movie so we could get to know M. Bison more and understand what makes him so scary.
Street Fighter showed us 17 fighters from the game series with most of them being from Street Fighter 1 & 2. There could be more than 17 as I’m going off my memory and a few second long internet search, but if this film had more fights in it, we could have truly appreciated more of these characters. So yes, again, this movie needed more fighting.
I’ve had a lot of negative to say about this but what’s most important is that this was an exciting movie and it made me laugh more than once. On top of that, the laughs were on purpose. Yes, this film was bad. But it’s fun bad. If those films aren’t your jam then you should go watch something else. The Elizabeth Smart documentary is out. Maybe go watch that?
I saw this with 3 friends and we spent the better part of half an hour talking after the film and while the negatives did come up, we also brought up what made us laugh so much. Street Fighter is a good time and if you’re down for cheesy and over-the-top, then put this on your list. This was everything I wanted it to be.
Street Fighter gets a 7.5 out of 11