If there's to be a reboot of Street Fighter -- a video-game franchise whose iron was hot back in the '90s -- it's not going to get synergy from the limp action flick Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun-Li.
Timed to coincide with the release of Street Fighter IV to a console near you, The Legend Of Chun-Li not only continues the long tradition of failed video-games-turned-movie, it has a pedigree. The first Street Fighter movie was a legendary 1994 bomb for Jean-Claude Van Damme, while this one comes to us from director Andrzej Bartkowiak, who a few years back botched Doom.
In this case, given Street Fighter's template of non-stop butt-kicking, Bartkowiak apparently decided what the movie needs -- at the expense of action -- is lots of extra story and extraneous characters for dubious marquee value (say hello to American Pie's Chris Klein).
More importantly, Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun-Li depends entirely on Kristin Kreuk's ability to come off as a) an engine of martial-arts destruction, and b) an actress. I mean, I've crushed on Smallville's Lana Lang as much as the next guy, but she sounds like she's reading a teleprompter at an awards show, particularly when she takes on the role of narrator.
On the other hand, reasonably adept use of stunt doubles means that Kreuk's fight scenes actually aren't that bad.
When we meet Chun-Li, she's a child piano prodigy in Hong Kong, whose mysteriously rich father Xiang (Edmund Chen) bonds with his daughter by teaching her martial arts. One day in her teens, her dad is kidnapped -- after much household destruction -- by a giant warrior named Balrog (Michael Clarke Duncan, whose approach to the role is to laugh a lot in basso profundo) and his boss, an international villain named Bison (played by professional villain Neal McDonough).
Years pass, Chun-Li grows up to become Kristin Kreuk, an acclaimed concert pianist who leaves her life behind when she receives a mysterious parchment that somehow compels her to go to Bangkok and find a mysterious "master" named Gen (Robin Shou). I told you there's loads o' plot. We're not even halfway there yet.
We'll skip her life on the streets of Bangkok, and the whole cheesy double entendre-filled subplot with Nash and a Thai homicide detective (Moon Bloodgood) and the weird endgame involving a shipment of something called "The White Rose" and go straight to the buttkicking.
The latter most notably matches Kreuk with a mob femme fatale named Cantana (Toronto-raised Hong Kong star Josie Ho) and a chief assassin named Vega (weakly played by The Black Eyed Peas' Taboo), before the predictable final battle with Bison.
Meanwhile, stay tuned for Lois Lane as Lara Croft.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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