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'Street Fighter' may be past its prime, but that never stopped Hollywood from trying to inject new life into a once flourishing franchise. And often they are able to strike successes, and more often, they create monsters that tarnish every image of pleasantry the originals created. Needless to say, 'The Legend of Chun Li' fails across the board. Almost, there are a few redeeming points scattered amongst the mess and incoherency. What once empowered gamers will now likely repulse them, along with moviegoers. 'The Legend of Chun Li' is a high priced, slick, beautiful, and most excellently filmed fillet of junk. From the poorly placed cast to the childish dialogue to the wire fu 'long past their welcome' fights...nothing is of note. Let me first bring about the casting. Taboo, that Black Eyed Pea fella, has about 2 whole minute of screen time whilest his scrawny frame hardly does justice to the original lean and cut, handsome powerhouse of a prize fighter Vega was concieved as. First mistake. Blood Moongood...her name is unforgettable, her beauty shines, and she is just a useless character. Sincerly wasted. She's improved her abilites since then but here we get all her novice line deliveries in their full glory. Strike two. And finally, the Razzie nominee himself that we all assumed was dead or in retirement, Chris Klien. That all American pretty boy we grew to know as the Oz in 'American Pie'. Here he sports a 5 0'Clock shadow, long hair, and his arrogant smile. He wants to look mature, or atleast convince us he has matured. And this is one of my major criticisms with the whole production being child like, all of Klien's serious moments are left on the cutting room floor. A total back story is scrapped so all we see is a suave, often annoying, arrogant yahoo who contributes relatively nothing to the film. After viewing the deleted scenes segment, his character 'Nash' has so much more depth (as much as Klien is capable of), and makes him more endurable as a viewer. Strike three. Casting's out. On a more positive note, I will say Michael Clarke Duncan as the boxing prodigy 'Balrog' is well cast as he's humorous and imposing, and Neal McDonough's Bison is a tricky worm. He's smooth, clever, and devious with his Irish accent. He's no Raul Julia, as his portrayal of Bison was superb, but McDonough does his own take and is one of the few actors here to strike respectability. The film itself is a superb accomplishment on a technical level. We see the beautiful sunsets of Hong Kong and Bangkok, the bright colors, the enormous city; the film was shot with pride. But everything else is second rate, third rate maybe. The story is a stock one taken from a many 'revenge motive' flicks, the dialogue is fit for a Saturday morning cartoon, the fight scenes are wire fu junk, and its disappointing to see the potential of the 'Street Fighter' franchise gone to putt. I cannot encourage viewing this film. People lampoon the 1994 film constantly, but after 'The Legend of Chun Li', I image people will be a bit more sympathetic to the Van Damme vehicle.Read full review
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li is directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak, the same director who brought us "Doom" which should be a good indication of how this movie was going to go. The story follows young Chun Li as her father is kidnapped by big bad guy, Bison and his stooges, Balrog and Vega. She grows into a lovely concert pianist. After receiving a mysterious scroll, she leaves behind her cushy life to experience the streets and tries to be a Robin Hood do-gooder with her martial arts skills. Mentor, Gen (not "Ken", just sounds the same while you do a double-take) tries to teach her some new tricks in a montage of training so she can go up against Bison's empire. There is a subplot with some detectives also trying to bring Bison down unsuccessfully. Bison is expecting a delivery called the White Rose and others try to intercept it, but when you find out what the White Rose is, you don't understand why anyone made a big deal of it and it could have been taken out of the movie. Just let Chun-Li pursue Bison because he's a bad guy and getting revenge for her dad, it's really enough of a motive there without bringing the other part in. Kristin Kreuk brought to fame by the TV series "Smallville" stars as older Chun-Li. She is a pretty girl, but seems to have lost weight since being on that show and looks emaciated in this movie. For a Street Fighter, she has no muscle on her body and is not representing those strong thighs that Chun-Li sports in the game. I do not deny her commitment to emotion in this role, but she never appears to have any fun. She is always mourning the loss of someone or getting injured and her smiles are few and far between. Bison is played by Neal McDonough who has appeared in military roles for "Flags of our Fathers" and "Band of Brothers" on HBO and more recently in the TV series "Desperate Housewives". He is very believable as a villain with his cold eyes. The physicality of the character was good and he could break a neck with the best of them. They throw in some background about him having removed his conscience and putting it in his daughter but it's completely unnecessary. If you tell me he is a bad guy, I will believe. I do not think you needed anything magical to make that point. The best casting in this movie is Michael Clarke Duncan as Balrog because he is one of the biggest guys out there with a wonderfully distinct deep voice and you never doubt he can kick anyone's butt. Vega is disappointingly played by Taboo from the Black Eyed Peas and is in a mask 90% of the time and is beat up by scrawny little Kristin Kreuk in less than three minutes which is sad considering an earlier scene where he supposedly took out half a dozen businessmen with his claws....but we do not see it, we just get to hear it while Bison enjoys some wine. Don't let a massacre stop you from enjoying a drink, right? I wish we could have seen more of Vega fighting because I enjoy that player in the game. A few good fight scenes. *Shrug* And that is where the Street Fighter fun stops. Where are the other characters? The way the ending was left indicated that the story was not over and a new character could be introduced in the next one ("His name is 'Ryu Something"), but the plot of this movie felt so weak to me that I do not know where they can go from here. Chris Klein plays Charlie Nash and is so over the top.....just read my whole review at http://www.rottentomatoes.com/user/708725/reviews/view.php?type=2&id=1198646Read full review
First of all, I like weird types of movies: from old to new, from classics to the bottom feeders. This one falls in the latter category since I also collect movies based on video games. I am just amazed at how much some producers truly believe they are creating something that will be worth watching when in fact it wouldn't be if it weren't for Kristin Kreuk's curves and Neal Mcdonough's addition to the Bison character. There are lots of reason to dislike the movie in the first place: the lack of respect to the costumes of the characters, the storyline that tries too much to be "Batman Begins" and the clichés that, let's be honest, don't work after you've seen them 1378 times. The fact that they wanted it grounded in "reality" makes it an even more stupid decision when you see that some characters control a special "force" that instantly kicks out all reality. Therefore, if they had to go with that, why not with the whole friggin' costumes and plots? It doesn't take a Murnau to see that something went wrong here: a producer's movie is always going to be that and rarely will it ever rise over the "average" rating. As for the bonus features, they are aplenty and can be sometimes enjoyable. Some deleted scenes explain (read: clichés) some characters deeper but most of them ended up on the cutting room floor for a good reason: they sucked. The making-of featurettes also prove to be fun, but tend to go a tad too much on the "selling" side of things. I mean come on, I already bought the damn thing, stop selling it to me, try telling me something I don't know. Like Hannibal once said: "People lack of honesty. They just see that you don't advance in life" and that's exactly what's wrong with special features these days: nothing new on the table. If given the chance to write and direct a video game-based movie, it probably would be this title, but take my word for it when I say I'd never do it other than respectfuly, a missing statement in just about all of the adaptations I've seen so far, except for the beautifully disturbing "Silent Hill" and the honestly not-so-bad "Tomb Raider". Things being the way they are, it'll probably be a long time before we can ever see a truly magnificent video-game adaptation hit the screen... but as the saying goes "one can only dream".Read full review
THIS WAS BY FAR THE FUNNIEST MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE WHICH WOULD BE A GREAT THING IF IT WERE A COMEDY. POORLY WRITTEN, DIRECTED AND MOST OF ALL CHRIS KLEIN WAS TRYING TO ACT. THE BAD BOY HARD NOSE COP ROLE IS NOT FOR HIM STICK TO AMERICAN PIE. KRISTEN KREUK AND MOON BLOODGOOD WERE PROBABLY DID THE BEST ACTING JIBS OF THE CAST BUT BOTH OF THEIR CHARACTERS WERE POORLY DEVELOPED AND TOTALLY RIDICULOUS. I WOULD LOVE TO SEE IF THEY COULD PULL OFF A SEQUEL WITH BETTER WRITING AND LESS OF MICHAEL CLARKE DUNCAN JUST LAUGHING.
I really like this movie a lot and its really good. It also has a lot of action and fun to watch. Its based off from the Street Fighter video game series.
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
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