Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li -- I just can't say how bad this movie is.
Back in the early days of movie channels like Showtime and Cinemax, there were a particular series of movies that crept up on the late night schedule. They call now call them “Triple B” movies, but these “action/adventure” movies might better be referred to as “Triple Ds,” both as a grade on their quality and the primary asset of the actresses in these films.
Movies like “Malibu Express” and “Hard Ticket to Hawaii” featured ex-Playboy bunnies acting — and we use that term very loosely — as spies and private investigators, who managed to get tangled in nonsensical plots that involved Russian espionage, gangsters and skinny dipping.
The writing was horrid, and the directing worse. Continuity was a joke, and their knowledge of weapons and martial arts was just plain silly. Of course, I was a young man then, and honestly, I wasn’t staying up till 3 a.m. for the Oscar-winning productions. I was watching for the girls, and I accepted that as a slave to my hormones, I was witnessing some of the worst movies ever put to video.
I never thought I would come across anything that bad, at least not in an actual theater.
And then I saw “Street Fighter: The legend of Chun Li.”
It was horrid — just absolutely vile.
Of course, how much can you expect from a video game movie. Other than the Tomb Raider movies, they have been pretty bad as a genre. And when you consider that the original “Street Fighter” was hailed as possibly the worst Jean Claude Van Damme movie ever, how could a 21st century film be worst than that?
Well, lets start with the title character. In the video game, as her name suggests, Chun Li is a Chinese kung fu expert garbed in one of those sexy Chinese dresses. In this movie, Chun Li starts out as a young Chinese girl (Inez Yan) who grows up to be a not-in-the-least-bit Oriental white girl (Kristin Kreuk). Her father manages to teach her kung fu before he is kidnapped by the crime lord Bison (Neal McDonough) and his strong-arm assistant, Balrog (Michael Clarke Duncan).
By the way, in the “old days,” Bison was a Soviet super soldier. In this movie, he is an Irish foundling who grew up in the Bangkok slums and becomes the leader of an evil corporation.
Duncan as Balrog is about the only piece of good casting in the film.
If you thought that casting a white girl with apparently no martial arts experience to play a kung fu master might be the worst Street
Fighter has to offer, you are wrong. Investigating Bison and his “mythical” corporation, is INTERPOL agent Charlie Nash (Chris Klein)
and Bangkok detective Maya Sunee (Moon Bloodgood), both of whose acting, script and weapons skills seem to be stolen straight from the Triple B movies. I am thinking Andy Sidaris (writer and director of the Triple B series) has a good case for copyright infringement.
Oh, and Nash and Maya have absolutely nothing to do with street fighting or the video game, much like the rest of the movie.
The fighting is terrible; the acting is bland; the plot is moronic and the script is … well, I can’t say in polite company.
The only thing worth fighting for is to keep your kid from dragging you to it.
