Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
2/28/09
One
of the most underrated movies of the 90's was Steven E. de Souza's action
camp spectacular Street Fighter. Based on the popular Capcom
video game series, it cast Jean-Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue as United
Nations peacekeepers at war with Dictator M. Bison (Raul Julia in his final
film appearance) and his rogue's gallery of martial arts warriors and mutants.
Also in play were a plucky group of fighters with axes to grind against
Bison, including Chun-Li (Ming-Na Wen), whose father was killed by the
madman. When she finally confronted him with her secret, which meant
nothing to him, Julia uncorked one of my all-time favorite movie lines:
“For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day
of your life. But for me... it was Tuesday.” Sadly, it's Tuesday
for everyone involved with Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li,
which does away not only with all of the scope and spectacle of its' predecessor,
but also all the fun and just about all the Street Fighter. A drab
martial arts crime saga with just the slightest dusting of fantasy, it
has some camp craziness of its' own (Chris Klein's performance belongs
in the Museum of Camp, should such a thing ever be constructed), but how
much of that is intentional is in the eye of the beholder.
Chun-Li
(Kristin Kreuk) narrates her life story: a concert pianist, she studied
martial arts with her father (Edmund Chen), who was kidnapped by gangster
Bison (Neal McDonough) when she was 10. Years later, when her Mother
dies, she receives a scroll, translated for her to reveal that she is destined
to be trained by Gen, leader of The Web, to be a great warrior who can
challenge Bison and claim her revenge. After taking some time to
become vaguely homeless to “become one with the people of Singapore”, she
finally meets up with Gen (Robin Shou), a former Bison goon who's dedicated
himself to making amends. He teaches her some martial arts, some
Jedi stuff (there are probably a lot of bodies piled behind his school
of the students who failed the “face first into the buzzsaw” test) and
a little “energy ball in your hand” trick. Whether she's some kind
of special Chosen One or everybody could do this stuff with a little homelessness
and a five minute montage is a question (one of many) that remains unanswered.
Either way, her efforts overlap with those of a Singapore cop (Moon Bloodgood)
and Interpol agent (Chris Klein) who're looking into Bison's outrageously
underhanded plan to buy the slums and bulldoze them to build housing for
“those who can afford it” (which, during this Global Economic Crisis, would
be No One). Gen explains that Bison's more than just Some Guy, he
once performed a ritual that transferred his conscience, and thus all his
weaknesses, into his newborn child (what???). Can our heroes stop
his evil plans before the slums are leveled? And how can the “schoolgirl”
whose life he once mockingly spared hope to go toe to toe with a man with
no soul?
Street
Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is about a decade behind the times,
taking a property filled with larger-than-life fantasy elements and transforming
them into “real world” things like vengeful pianists and corrupt developers.
No more than 5 of the movie's 97 minutes are devoted to things that couldn't
happen in a bad martial arts action movie. Granted, about 92 of its'
97 minutes are devoted to things that couldn't happen in real life (the
other 5 are devoted to credits), like Bison's smooth manipulation of the
Singapore “Board of Directors” (city council, maybe?). When they
won't vote for his plans, he has Chun-Li's Dad (whose legendary list of
contacts is given as the reason he was abducted and then held captive for
presumably over a decade. Those must be SOME contacts, especially
since they didn't change during ten years spent in a windowless cell) find
out/remember who their families are and he abducts them. Surely no
one would notice the disappearance of every family member of the city government
right before they make an outrageous decision that makes half the city
homeless. Bison's goons never miss a chance to politely tip over
an extra flower pot or kick someone lying on the ground, although the whole
eviction sequence just made me think of the old Bronx 2000 episode
of Mystery Science Theater 3000 with bullhorned goons shouting “Leave
the Bronx!”
Justin
Marks' script is alternately banal and hysterical, filled with weird dialog
that makes you go “Hmmm,” like Bison telling one of his goons “If anything
happens to her, I'll kill you first!” (who he'll kill second will presumably
be determined at a later time) and endless scenes of Chun-Li wandering
around the city while she narrates useful stuff like “I never felt closer
to finding Bison, and never farther away.” Director Andrzej Bartkowiak
does deliver halfway decent action from time to time, aided by a positively
bone-crunching round of work by the foley team. In the past, he's
made fun action movies like Romeo Must Die and Cradle 2 the Grave
that relied on a certain delightful craziness, like when Exit Wounds
reveals that DMX's badass character is in fact the millionaire founder
of Everythingfor99cents.com. Here, the craziness is primarily bad,
and the actors seem to be totally on their own, not unlike an Uwe Boll
movie. Take Michael Clarke Duncan, whose character Balrog thinks
everything is hilarious. I kept waiting for him to say “Sorry, death
just cracks me up!”
Pity
he never meets hard-boiled Interpol agent Charlie Nash, because HE'S funny!
Why the movie makes its' resident American an operative of a European agency
is another one of those mysteries. I kept waiting for someone to
ask for a closer look at that badge. Faced with a script that offers
the earnest, All-American actor one of those smart-assed, loudmouth American
stereotypes you often see in foreign films, Klein responds with a performance
that resembles Keanu Reeves playing a gay Eminem after chasing down a case
of Jolt! Cola with two fistfuls of amphetamines. From the moment
Charlie arrives on the scene squealing his car to a stop while blasting
rap music out his windows, he's practically wearing a sign around his neck
that reads “It's OK, America has arrived! All local women may take
a number and await my call!” (he's so oversexed, in fact, that he comes
off like an overcompensating closeted homosexual). I really felt
for the guy, I can't remember the last time I saw an actor this miscast.
And the role is awful: he and Bloodgood spend their time conducting
an investigation that consists primarily of stakeouts and shooting people
as a sideline to a REALLY bad romantic comedy. They're always flirting,
but every last thing that comes out of their mouths would send any sane
person running into the bathroom to smash their head against the mirror
shouting “Idiot! Now she'll NEVER go out with me!”
Kruek,
meanwhile, seems to have made a conscious effort to make the best of her
first starring role no matter what it's in and plows from beginning to
end with a relentless oblivious dignity. After Gen tells her Bison's
utterly absurd origin story (I did mention that he ripped that newborn
child from its' mother's womb with his bare hands didn't I?), she acts
like she didn't even hear it. Seduce one of Bison's female lieutenants
on the dance floor so she can beat the stuffing out of her in the ladies'
room while growling questions like Jacqueline Bauer? No problem.
Flee hired goons into a room full of exotic dancers so she can perform
swinging kicks off their poles? What poles, I didn't see any poles!
The Smallville actress is seriously beautiful and has displayed
some dramatic chops in recent seasons, but she's miscast here in a role
that requires a more winking presence. Not Chris Kline miscast, but
still... That she emerges unembarrassed and shows some skill in the
action scenes is a sort of triumph.
The
man who comes closest to actually delivering the goods is McDonough, an
actor of great skill and charisma whose career has led him to a mysterious
exile in bad movies like The Hitcher and
88 Minutes. For reasons I could not
begin to guess at, somebody decided Bison is Irish (the script even has
to awkwardly explain why), so the Massachusetts-born actor gives the accent
his best shot, which isn't quite good enough. Otherwise, he lives
large in the role and also shows action chops I haven't previously seen.
Shou does everything he can with his stock mentor role, although pretty
much everything he's made to say is nonsense.
As
silly as all this may sound (and it is silly enough to play best in venues
where it can be freely mocked), Street Fighter: The Legend of
Chun-Li is mostly just boring. It's essentially a Street Fighter
prequel, with the actual tournament that makes up the game mentioned in
passing to “set up the sequel” in the final scene (pardon me while I stifle
a chuckle). It's primarily a movie for gamers who'll be delighted
by actors saying their favorite characters' names on film, Neal McDonough
completists and friends of Chris Klein who're running out of things to
tease him about. For the rest of us, it's just another reminder that
Jean-Claude Van Damme wasn't so bad after all. |
