Street Fighter is a 1994 action-adventure feature-film loosely based on the 1991 hit arcade game, Street Fighter II. It has nothing to do with the Street Fighter series of films starring Sonny Chiba from the 1970s; this very important, very obvious fact is worth mentioning because despite the popularity of the Street Fighter franchise and the cult status of the Street Fighter film series, there are a small number of people who believe that there is a connection between the two… other than the fact that the two share the same name. I’m serious; those people exist.
In any case, whenever most people bring up Street Fighter to any Street Fighter aficionado, they tend to look down upon the movie because it isn’t entirely accurate to the original video games. Watching the movie, I sort of understand why. Whereas Street Fighter II The Game was about a number of fighters taking part in a global tournament, each with their own motivations and whatnots, the Street Fighter movie reconfigures the plot into a U.N.-esque military operation headed by the American Colonel Guile (played by Belgium Van-Damme) to rescue hostages from a terrorist group headed by General M. Bison (played by Raul Julia).
The end result of this shift in storyline is the reconfiguration of certain characters that is different from the source material. Rather than being friendly rivals, Ryu and Ken are now street hustlers and smugglers looking for a quick buck. Chun-Li is a news reporter with a camera crew of Balrog and Edmund Honda, rather than an Interpol agent, an agressive boxer banned from the sport (although that detail is brought up in a scene), and a champion sumo wrestler respectively, Dhalsim is apparently a scientist for some reason, T. Hawk is actually scrawnier in comparison to his roided-up video game original counterpart, and the Brazilian beast Blanka is actually a mutated version of Guile’s best friend, Charlie… who would eventually be introduced into the Street Fighter Alpha series of fighting games later on and be a derivative of Guile’s fighting style as opposed to having anything to do with Blanka… whose real name is actually Jimmy… which is the furthest thing from a Brazilian name there could be.
Yeah, it’s easy to see why the hardcore fans would hate on this movie.
If you were to put aside the numerous inaccuracies and liberties taken in porting the source material to the silver screen, you would find a film that has its shining moments among the layers of cheese and camp. Some of the set-pieces were rather nice and did a good job in depicting war-torn country and a makeshift command center. Some of the costume work was rather nice (Bison costume especially) and there was some attempt to make these actors look like their video game counterparts – with varying degrees of success. The action sequences were pretty cool with plenty of explosions, and the fights were somewhat serviceable, given the varied experience of the cast. And hey, they even managed to toss in a couple moves from the game – albeit in a limited or drastically altered state… but it’s the thought that matters. Funny how a much later live-action adaptation attempt missed this mark
Some people have issues with Guile being the focal point of the movie and thus the guy who defeats Bison. I would admit that Van-Damme as Guile… meh, not the best choice, but he does what he can with the material given… and that cheese has to come from somewhere. But setting aside the casting choice… in my mind, it made perfect sense for an American production studio to place the American soldier in the protagonist role of their Street Fighter motion picture. Surely, if Russians had conceived a Street Fighter film, it wouldn’t surprise me if they made Zangief the hero of the story. Street Fighter II, at least at the time and long before the convoluted storytelling attempts and retcons that made the whole series plotline much more ridiculous than any third-party medium ever did, always seemed like a pretty open-ended tournament that had eight (later twelve, later sixteen, later thirty-something… ARGH!) possible outcomes.
I rather liked Raul Julia’s portrayal of M. Bison in this movie; he manages to convey while bringing some class and dignity to the role… something I felt was lacking in later, more truer interpretations of the character. The rest of the acting is rather hit or miss. But any scene involving Zangief and his backwards way of thinking did earn me a chuckle, so there’s that.
Overall, Street Fighter is a pretty okay movie. For what it gets wrong in terms of adapting the source material, it also provides some good, dumb, cheesy fun. If you’re willing to forgo any nitpicking tendencies and just want a decent action flick, then Street Fighter is a worthwhile choice. There are certainly worse movies out there, but this isn’t one of them.
dtm666 