SYNOPSIS:
As a child, Chunli moves from San Francisco to Hong
Kong with her family. There she learns wushu from her father
Xiang, a well connected businessman. One night, her home is
attacked by Bison and his henchman, Xiang is forced to leave
with them. Years later, Chunli grows up and becomes a talented
concert pianist. One day, she receives a scroll written in
Ancient Chinese text. Chunli finds a wise old lady who reveals
to her to find Gen in Bangkok. Elsewhere, Nash and Maya investigates
a murder of several heads of criminal syndicate families in
Bangkok. Chunli finds Gen in Bangkok and is told how to locate
her father. In order to save her father, Chunli trains under
Gen. Meanwhile, Nash and Maya discovers that the mastermind
of the murder is Bison. Bison has a weakness; the White Rose.
It is up to Chunli to find it and use it to defeat Bison.
MOVIE REVIEW:
In
conjunction with a worldwide launch of the Street Fighter
on various platforms, Capcom (the makers behind the Street
Fighter videogames) joined hands with Hyde Park Entertainment
for a second attempt at coming up with a live-action adaptation
based on their hugely popular fighting games.
Focusing
the plotline solely on the character Chun-Li this time round,
"Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li" basically
tells the origins story of how Chun-Li comes to be the fighter
that one is familiar with. Unfortunately, there’s nothing
positive coming out of this production as it smells like a
cheap B-grade movie despite a cast consisting of some relatively
well-known names.
Kristin
Kreuk (Smallville) plays the title character, Chun-Li while
our local television star Edmund Chen plays her dad, Xiang,
a businessman who supposedly has vast connections to prominent
political and business figures. The family lives a luxury
and carefree life until one night an evil businessman Bison
(Neal McDonough from Minority Report) and his henchman, Balrog
(Michael Clarke Duncan) captured Xiang and forever changes
Chun-Li’s life. From a pianist to a fighter that champions
justice that is.
This
might sound at least reasonably coherent if this is meant
to be a fantasy set in an unknown world and time. However
in a feeble attempt to make it as realistic as possible, the
story is set in modern day Bangkok and Hong Kong and yet we
are supposed to believe Bison’s evil corporation Shadaloo
(a tribute to the first Street Fighter which is set in a country
called Shadaloo) can get away from all the evildoings such
as killing all the triad figures in one night. And screenwriter
Justin Marks actually throws in some mythical mumbo-jumbo
about how Bison got his power and how his rival Gen (Robin
Shou from Mortal Kombat) has all those magical moves is beyond
me consider we are told they both grew up from slums and not
Shaolin temple or whatsoever.
Faring
even worse is the costumes design which is totally disconnected
from their videogames counterpart. Of course realistically
you can’t expect one to be dressed in a karate outfit
or Chinese cheongsum all the time but still when you see Bison
appearing for the first time in a suit and Chun-Li dresses
like she is readying for a ladies night at Zouk, you know
how bad this is going to be.
The
fighting choreography by Dion Lam (The Storm Riders) is respectfully
done to be fair (not great mind you) but hampered by lazy
editing and awkward camera angles. The characters’ trademark
powers were amazingly missing as well with the exception of
a lame Chun-Li’s aerial spinning kick that looks like
it was done with a limp leg cramp.
Director Andrzej Bartkowiak (Romeo Must Die, Doom) assembled
in addition a cast including American Pie alumni Chris Klein,
hot babe Moon Bloodgood (Terminator Slavation) and cameos
by Taboo and Cheng Pei Pei and all went into waste in this
half-baked movie adaptation of the widely popular videogame.
This makes the 1994 Van Damme’s version looks Oscar-worthy.
Pity that Marks even threw in a hint toward the end about
a certain character called Ryu to pave way for a 'I-bet-my-life-there-won’t-be-any'
sequel.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
This Code 3 DVD contains no extra features.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
Presented
in fullscreen (which might turn off some readers), the visual
is acceptable but the Dolby Digital stereo tends to be offensively
loud at times while dialogue can be rather soft thus it might
require you to adjust the volume knob accordingly.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD
RATING:
Review by Linus Tee
Posted on 8 July 2009
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