Okay, I don't think anyone can reasonably argue that this movie is good; at least, not in any conventional sense. The acting, except for perhaps Raul Julia, is sub-par at best, the story is ridiculous, and even the fight scenes aren't very well-executed (pretty bad for a film with the title Street Fighter, huh).
So why am I giving this 5 stars? Well, for starters, I was all of 8 years old when the film came out, and deeply in love with video games, especially Street Fighter II, which this film is (loosely) based on. I also liked Jean-Claude Van Damme for some bizarre reason-Bloodsport, Hard Target, Timecop-to me, he could do no wrong. Which made this film a perfect storm of sorts. Being older and wiser, I can easily spot the many flaws in this film, but the over-the-top, cheesy dialogue, stunts, and story are what keep me loving this movie. I don't think it's good anymore, like when I did when I was eight, but now I realize it's in that rare so-terrible-it's-actually-highly-entertaining category. Just don't expect much and watch it more for laughs than a serious story (it's based on a video game for crying out loud) and you'll get a kick out of it.
I mean, how could you not love a movie that has one of the characters, watching a surveillance camera revealing a bomb-laden truck about to crash into the building he's in, exclaim, "Quick! Somebody change the channel!"
Whenever I think of video game movies, I always think of only three movies: Super Mario Brothers, Street Fighter, and Double Dragon. Perhaps because these were the first three made or perhaps because I loved all three as a kid. Either way, of those three, it's Street Fighter I seem to always think of the most as far as these kind of movies go.
Street Fighter: The Movie came out in 1994, a year after the release of Super Mario Brothers. Let's just be upfront in saying it's no where near being an Oscar worthy movie. It's probably not even really "good", at that. It's a somewhat cheesy or campy movie (but not as much as SMB and no where near as much as Double Dragon). But I've always really enjoyed the movie.
So what is the plot of the movie? This is one place I think it hurt itself with a lot of Street Fighter fans. As was once said, for a movie called Street Fighter....there's a glaring lack of street fighting, much less a tournament. I could have easily seen the movie be your standard martial arts film in that sense had they made it a bit more like the games. However, in the movie, Bison is as he is in the games: a power mad dictator out for world domination. Opposing him is the Allied Nations with Guile commanding the army. And that's basically the plot. Bison has taken a large group of people hostage and has given the world 72 hours to hand him $20 billion in ransom while the main characters set out to stop him and rescue the hostages (though they don't all come together until towards the end of the movie).
Many of the major characters from the games out at the time are in the movie as well. Ryu and Ken are a couple of con artists who rip off criminals, Sagat and Vega, both former cage fighters, operate as arms dealers for Bison, Chun Li, out to avenge her father, Balrog, who is one of the more major departures from his game counterpart, and E. Honda work as reporters, and Guile, like his game counterpart, is after Bison partially to avenge his friend Charlie who is combined with Blanka from the game as in the movie, Charlie IS Blanka. Zangief, though not like in the game, works for Bison.
I bought the blu-ray "Extreme Edition" version of the movie. Admittedly I never owned the DVD so I can't compare. But I thought the image quality was nice. I have no complaints there. There's several special features but so far I've only watched the deleted scenes. There's unfortunately only two of them and both center around Chun Li.
The only "big name" people in the movie are Raul Julia as M. Bison and Jean Claude Van Damme who plays Colonel William F. Guile. Both give good performances (as good as it can be given the circumstances). Raul Julia definitely takes the cake though as my favorite performance of the movie. It was clear he was enjoying himself with the role. It's only sad because Raul Julia died not long after the movie came out. I remember always seeing the "For Raul. Vaya con dios" at the end but never realizing what it meant (both with RJ's death and I didn't know Spanish at the time--it means go with God). Now that I do, I felt a twinge of sadness as it appeared and the credits rolled.
Another thing I've heard people didn't like about the movie is they changed the central character. In the games, Ryu is the central/main character while in the movie, it's Guile. While Guile is my favorite character (in both the games and movie), I can understand.
All in all, can you really say Street Fighter is a "good" movie? Probably not. But something about it I can't quite put my finger on has always made me really enjoy the movie. Truth be told, it's probably my favorite video game movie.
Buy Street Fighter (Extreme Edition) (1994) Now
The biggest distinction that "Street Fighter: the Movie" holds for me is that it's the first Van Damme picture I ever saw. On a global scale, it was the first video game-film adaptation to turn a buck, which should count for something despite the routine bashing it receives for how shoddily it portrayed the most popular fighting game of the time on the big screen. I was personally never a huge "Street Fighter" fan, but while I can certainly spot the plotline unfaithfulness, I can't help but notice just how fun the movie is. It's a poor adaptation and a questionable action movie, but nevertheless a decent teenaged adventure when taken at face value.
The story: when the mad warlord General M. Bison (Raul Julia, The Addams Family) is poised to overrun the earth in pursuit of his own personal empire, it will be up to a multi-faceted group of fighters including Colonel William Guile (Van Damme, Timecop), reporter Chun-Li (Ming Na, Final Fantasy The Spirits Within), and conmen Ryu Hoshi (Byron Mann, Crying Freeman) and Ken Masters (Damian Chapa) to stop him.
This film is definitely over-cast, comparable to Mortal Kombat: Annihilation in terms of saturation. No less than fifteen characters from the original two games more than half of their combined casts are featured, resulting in a stifling deficit of character development, since next to none of them have the appropriate amount of screentime for it. The actual casting choices of these characters can also be taken to task, but I'm pleased that through the admirably accurate costumes and cosmetics most of the performers at least *look* like their animated counterparts (in some cases, like Robert "Blanka" Mammone, you almost wish they didn't). Personalities and backgrounds have been addled with as expected to accommodate the tournament-free premise, but none of them bother me as much as the case of M. Bison: he's the single goofiest part of this whole immature adventure, practically a forerunner to Dr. Evil, having been written so comically that it's impossible to consider him threatening even when he's snapping guys' necks or shooting electricity from his fists.
The movie never has a problem with pacing, rolling along fittingly enough at a video game's pace and always presenting you with some silly or bombastic event to watch; it's never boring. Sadly, there's not nearly enough fighting going on, and when it does happen it's not that great. It seems amazing that, considering what it's based on, the movie only has a 'round half-dozen fights, depending on your definition of a fight (i.e. I don't consider it a fight when Guile and his team ambush some soldiers and Kylie Minogue does a cool but unnecessary pro wrestling move), and even more amazing how very bland most of them are with Benny Urquidez (Spider-Man) supplying fight choreography. Some of the performers just aren't good, and some of them surprisingly so (is this the same Damian Chapa who rocked the house with Michael Worth in U.S. Seals 2? I hope not!), but other times they just feel stifled. For example, the showdown between Ryu and Vega (Jay Tavare, Pathfinder) was my favorite of the movie, and really felt like it could've gone somewhere were it not for the cramped locker room they were in.
Apparently, the critical lashing "Street Fighter" received moved Van Damme to choose his future roles more carefully, so in a pinch, I'll accredit every good movie he did subsequently to this minor disappointment. Seeing as this particular franchise hasn't done too well in live-action film regardless of who's involved, I can't be too hard on this first attempt and will continue to regard it neutrally and enjoy it by accident every few years. Fans of the games who somehow have yet to see the film should avoid it unless they're intentionally looking for something to heckle.
Read Best Reviews of Street Fighter (Extreme Edition) (1994) Here
The 90's was a decade dominated by some of the most memorable video games ever created. Next to Madden 97 and NBA Live sat the arcade classic Street Fighter. It was a game kids lined up to play at the arcade, back when those were of more relevance. Another great thing the 90's did was make hilariously awesome B movies predominately in the action and horror genres. Amongst the action genre came a gang of horrible video game movie adaptations that just can't be touched. These movies are pure gold in the B-est way possible. The most noteworthy had to be Mario Brothers (naturally), Mortal Kombat, and our feature flick Street Fighter starring the muscles from Brussels. Any movie starring Van Damme is always a sure thing, especially when it's a video game movie. That is on par with a nice cyborg flick which you know is the tops.
Van Damme plays Col. William Guile as he leads his army into a country called Shadaloo. The armies task is to take down the evil country leader General M. Bison. All the video game characters are part of the movie, but don't actually battle it out with each other. So really it's just a really bad action movie that utilizes Street Fighter's video game characters. Hey it works for us like watching Santa squeeze into his football pants. The movie really heats up when one of Van Damme's main soldiers is kidnapped and turned into a hideous freak creature called Blanka...which was the big green guy in the video game. They train Blanka to be an ultimate killing machine by juicing him up and making him watch video clips of all crazy happenings. It's pretty similar to GnR's "Welcome to the Jungle" video just way more B. About as B as having fat Axl in the video instead. Despite all the mutating, Col. Guile is able to sooth the savage beast by saying "c'mon baby, you know you're the girl of my dreams." Then all the characters reign down blows upon Bison and his evil henchmen, with Van Damme delivery the final death blow.
It's funny that a lot of reviews panned Street Fighter in a somewhat brutal fashion. It's a wonder to comprehend what these folks were expecting in a Van Damme movie whose plot is based on a video game. If the movie was actually good then you should be complaining. It was created to be a complete nightmare, unless you're a fellow fan of the B arts. If you love B then Street Fighter is a very enjoyable experience. Yeah of course it's poorly written and acted with even less fines, but that's the beauty of it. Our only complaint is that it actually made the movie theaters and has close to 200 reviews. We typically go straight to video all the way baby. However in certain cases we will delve into the more well known features if the content fits. It's not one of Van Dammes finest, but really is anything he's done all that fine?
Want Street Fighter (Extreme Edition) (1994) Discount?
It was only a matter or time before the phenomenal video game smash hit was turned into a video game, and when word was out there was to be a live action movie, i don't think anyone really knew what to expect. And once it was out, it made it's money, which was guaranteed, but left a lot of the fans of the game in disappointment at how there favorite video game characters had been portrayed.
To those who never played the game, it was a JCVD movie where he led the U.N against the dictatorship of General Bison with 100 other side characters involved. But to those who just dismiss the movie and give it 2 to 4 word reviews, you really need to stand back and look at just how many characters from the game are portrayed into this film. What was it meant to be? 80 mins of nonstop fighting with special effects coming out of there hands?
I have to say, for the task that was at hand and the plot of the movie, it's not that bad of a job when asking someone to involve so many characters from a video game and incorporate them into a full length motion picture. I mean, this movie was based on Super Street Fighter 2 and that game had about 16 characters in it. It really came down to the casting of certain characters and costumes that really held this movie back.
Jean Claude Van Dame as Cornell William F Guile. I think half the audience liked the idea he played Guile, and the other half would ask why the muscles from Brussels is playing an American military Cornell? As like any JCVD movies, he has his moments of coolness & his moments of complete lameness.
Raul Julia as M. Bison i thought was great casting. Raul really researched dictators like Hitler and Mussolini for this role, and created exactly who Bison was expected to be. I'm not just praising him cause he died just after this movie, no, he is one of the much better actors in this movie that when I think if someone else could have been cast who would be better in this role, then Raul is the one I would say is the #1 choice.
Ming-Na as Chun Li I think did a terrible job. It's not so much she didn't look the part, but I think they could have found someone who looked a better Chun-Li, but also her acting from sarcasm to doing her own lame stunt's that look stupid in the movie (hence that roll she did to put a tracking device on the truck) really make you wonder how she got this role in the first place. She plays the role too goofy in most parts, then when she is supposed to be mean, you just don't buy it.
Wes Studi I think played a great Sagat. He looked the part, and played it straight. Even tho he was not as tall as Sagat should be, it would be very hard to track down a 7'4 kickboxer to play the role.
Jay Tavare I suppose played a decent Vega. Surely there is someone out there that could have done a much better job, but this guy played the character decently and no real complaint about his performance in the movie.
Kylie Minogue playing Cammy was the worst choice of the entire movie. She completely killed the character by having no knowledge what-so-ever of who the heck she was supposed to be portraying. And her accent in the film is just enough to make cringe.
Byron Mann as Ryu was not quite the right choice, tho he could have been better if he was a little darker and not working with Damian Chapa who really did not suit the role of Ken Masters at all. The two of them where not what you expected out of so many SF2 fans favorite characters. Both of them should have been played by people a bit thicker and didn't look like the comic relief from a stoner movie.
Roshan Seth I suppose played Dahlsim as best he could for the way he is written into this movie. Many where disappointed he was not a Yoga master made of rubber shooting flames out his rear end, but for what his role was here, I suppose he did a decent enough job.
Grand L. Bush looked the part of Balrog in some parts of the movie, but he did not seem he was the right choice for the character. Balrog should've been much meaner and bulked up. This guy was far from the right choice.
Peter Navy Tuiasosopo as E.Honda I will say was a good choice to play the role. Even tho he was Hawaiin in the movie, and the video game he is Japanese, not to forget in real life Peter is Samoan, there probably wouldn't have been a lot of Japanese men of this size that could make this character work on screen.
Andrew Bryniarski as Zangief was really horrible choice. It wouldn't have been that hard to find an actual wrestler who stands at about 7 foot in height who looked more the role then this guy does. This guy looks like he is wearing a bad fake beard and wig, and is trying to play the character just as goofy as can be. it really ruins scenes with guys like Raul Julia who give a great performance, and then this guy screws it up with really bad acting.
Gregg Rainwater as T.Hawk, why did they even bother? I'm not even going to go on about this one.
Miguel A. Núñez Jr. as Dee Jay was pretty bad as well, the character was written in badly, so i guess it wouldn't matter who played this role.
Robert Mammone as Charlie (Blanka) again, another one they should have had a beefed up guy play the role of and make him look somewhat credible then just completely stupid.
Kenya Sawada as Captain Sawada what a memorable character this one was not. This was supposed to be the introduction of a new character for the video games Capcom was planning to release in an upcoming SF game, but after the fact no one took any notice of him in this movie, I guess the idea was canned.
So with very few right choices for the roles of the SF characters, you can see why the movie is not praised by fans of SF2 from being the wrong choice of characters. If it had a balance of the right looks for the role, and everyone on the same level from who is going to play the role seriously, and who is going to portray it as a loony tune, then the results may have varied more in the thumbs up favor.
BONUS FEATURES
Boring commentary from the director giving you more information about his background and life then anything to do with the movie.
Trailers to SF4 (big deal)
2 Deleted Scenes that are worthy of looking at.
The trailer (whoopie)
Still, with the negative things I have said about this film, and the things I would have changed, much like Masters Of The Universe, there is just something about the film that makes you want to see it at least once every year or two. It's far from the worst film of all time.
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This was a really cute movie probably aimed at teens. It was not meant to be high art, so I'm rating it for delivering a good job for what it was intended to be: a cute and well written story about 3 nice and likeable Texas girls, mostly set in wonderful, romantic European settings, and just a lot of fun overall. All three actresses were quite good and this was a nice afternoon escape film. It was nice to see a teen film that was pretty positive and wholesome for a change, not too old for its intended audience. I saw this in a theater mostly full of mid to late teen girls, and they all seemed to be enjoying it a lot.
