Street Fighter is a fine video game adaptation. Which in itself is an accomplishment given the history of movies based on games. Sadly though it falls short in a few big missteps.
The film is set in 1993 where we follow estranged Street Fighters Ryu and Ken Masters, who were raised as brothers, as they get recruited into the 2nd ever World Warrior Tournament. A tournament of the best fighters in the world ran by a seemingly evil dictator like figure.
Soon though its clear that the tournament is just a front for a much larger evil plan that could end the world as they know it.
Here lies the first start of the problems. For a 2+ hour story which really tries to lay on the story here heavily, its just pointless really. We get 2 bad guys here in the movie pretty much and one is just sort of around doing things and the other shows up briefly and then its over. Its the same issue of the tournament being such a huge deal then almost entirely ignored.
For a film that is about fighters why do we start on round 2 of the tournament? Why aren’t we shown even glimpses of most fights and why do we see barely anything of the tournament at all.
The lead up and promotions to this film sort of condemned it a bit. We were given previews, promos, posters, etc showing this wide cast of known characters played by stars like 50 Cent, Orville Peck, Cody Rhodes, Roman Reigns, and more only for them all to get minutes at most of screen time. Its a shame because most do great with the likes of Code Rhodes as Gulie steals the show. He oozes charism and his one liners are some of the only ones here that work.
Which brings another big issue in is the unneeded one liners. The film can’t entirely figure out if its serious or a comedy. Even in serious moments we get one liners that ruin the moment. This doesn’t even mention the fact that so many jokes here just fall flat or serious characters get made over to be laughing stocks.
Thankfully the fight scenes though work here. They are cartoonish and over the top in moments with characters taking way more damage than normal, being thrown through brick walls, and the likes. We also get treated to animated segments to help give us story insight that are a pleasure to see and well done, even if they don’t do much but add padding to this 2+ hour long movie.
In the end is Street Fighter bad, no. It very blatantly ends in a way to set it itself right up for a sequel or more. The action scenes are fun and leave you wishing there was more. We get to see a lot of characters, even if just more for brief moments. If they could just figure out pacing and dialog a bit more we’d be set.
Score :
3 / 5
