Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li (2009) Review
THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
If you’re passionate about something, people will notice. But if you can’t make that visible, then no one is gonna remember it. Besides the Paul WS Anderson era of Resident Evil, I don’t think there has been a video game adaptation so unfaithful the way gamers saw Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li.
PLOT
The 2009 film establishes a new origin involving the iconic protagonist. She grew up living from San Francisco to Hong Kong loved dearly by her businessman father Huang Xiang (Edmund Chen), who would teach her wushu apart from playing piano. Joy would be taken away from her when he gets taken by the sadistic leader of the Shadaloo criminal organization, M Bison. Growing up without him, she would be a successful pianist but when her mother Jeanne (Emilze Junquiera) dies of terminal cancer, she would receive a Chinese written scroll and would investigate its source. In the story’s present, Bison has usurped full control of Shabaloo thanks to his masked assassin Vega wiping out fellow bosses. Their deaths get the attention of Interpol agent Charlie Nash and Royal Thai Police detective Maya Sunee, who work together to deduce Shabaloo’s involvement. Chun Li’s journey in translating the scroll takes her to a former comrade of Bison named Gen. He takes her in after he finds her unconscious fending off against local thugs and he explains to her that training martial arts under his wing will help her find her dad. When she discovers Bison is going to operate Shadaloo publicly, she would spy on his henchman Balrog, overhearing threats on property owners of not only land but also rights to a docking harbor that’ll allow a ‘White Rose’ shipment. She extracts information of the White Rose after attacking one of Bison’s secretaries, Cantana, at a nightclub. And as she escape from Nash and even Vega, Cantana is killed by Bison for what happened. The morning after does Gen explain that Bison grew up an orphan and lived as a thief as a result of being abandoned by his parents. In his youth, he killed his pregnant wife to transfer his conscience to his prematurely born child. Just when Chun Li later interrogates a harbor employee over the White Rose’s arrival, Balrog captures her. She gets to reunite with Huang, only for Bison to murder him in front of her. As she escapes in heartbreak, Gen patches up her wounds and helps her complete training. As the next night comes, she reaches out to Nash to back her up in stopping Bison. He agrees with the company of Maya and a SWAT unit to take on the remaining Shabaloo forces. The night this happens, Gen is able to defeat Balrog and Bison is able to find the White Rose on the ship which turns out to be his daughter Rose. When the police officially arrive, Chun Li is able to kill Bison by breaking his neck with her legs. She leaves once Rose is taken safely by the police. When she chooses to settle back into Hong Kong, Gen would reach out to her of an upcoming fighting tournament and of a fighter named Ryu, hoping to recruit him for his cause. The film would end with Chun Li deciding not to join him and prefer being home for now.
THOUGHTS
It is a bit saddening that I can keep low expectations and still get disappointed with something I wasn’t so excited about. I knew this adaptation was gonna be distant of the source material, but it is so far off that it doesn’t feel like a Street Fighter story at all compared to what we got in 1994. This is one of those situations where you realize how much life costumes can give to the characters and because of that, nobody felt like the characters they’re playing; From there, I feel nothing throughout. I can imagine how livid I would’ve been if not Ryu would’ve been ruined had they not tried with him should there have been a follow-up to this dump of a reboot. Vega wears the iconic mask and glove combo, but not having color to the rest of his attire is where I’m not intimidated of him at all, nor do I buy that Taboo of the Black Eyed Peas is giving a believable performance of the character. For him to be beaten so easily by Chun Li is quite overwhelming fiven he’s supposed to be more useful than that. From there, the rest of the cast is just as flat when the editing can’t even make exciting fight scenes either. There is no chemistry at all between Chris Klein & Moon Bloodgood as Nash & Maya respectively, as you can’t really tell if they’re just professional partners or also personal. I usually love Michael Clarke Duncan, but I never felt any what intimidated of Balrog because he’s got no substance to him other than being a brute. You can tell there is a lot of effort to bringing a complexity towards Bison’s sadistic nature, but even that feels that when played Neil McDonough and that hurts for me to say because he’s usually a good actor. What’s also not believable? I’d give it to Robin Shou as Gen. Because he played Liu Kang in the 90s Mortal Kombat movies, I was giving benefit of the doubt towards him, but his wisdom as a reformed martial artist ain’t clicking with me. The only thing where I’m seeing most effort is towards the lead herself. Kristin Kreuk is giving her all as the wistful & empathetic protagonist gamers know Chun Li for, in turn teaching of inner peace & selflessness, but it doesn’t belong in this script that lacks immersive-ness. With that self awareness, there is a handful of inconsistencies story-wise that nearly made me fall asleep. Like it’s crazy to think Huang never tried escaping at all when it never even looked like he was surveilled as much as his daughter. While I do wonder why it took so long for Chun Li to find the scroll that takes her to Gen, I don’t get why or how Balrog lost track of her in the first place. Like if Bison didn’t want that to happen, he should’ve had Vega on double duty. And if anyone has died on Gen’s watch over the buzzsaw portion of his training, that’s pretty messed up. Lastly as I scratch wondering how did Balrog know Gen got on the boat, it felt so out of character for Chun Li to not apologize to Rose over killing her father. It’s not like she knows she speaks Russian, so it would’ve not hurt to try. To get this over with, writer Justin Marks and director Andrzej Bartkowiak fail to bring anything exciting for Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li and fall flat at every second. If you’re a fan of the games, avoid this at all costs and forget about it like everyone else has.
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