Street Fighter (1994) Reviews

• Why I defend Street Fighter to this day.

  solidgameboy12-12010-11-27

  Street Fighter is a strange video game movie. The game is an amazing 2D fighter with a wide array of characters from different continents who battle it out for...something. The Movie, surprisingly, has more plot than you would think. M. Bison (Raul Julia, in his final performance) is now portrayed as a megalomanical super villain who has dreams of causing collapse to the entire world, such as killing a large number of hostages unless paid a ransom worthy of Dr. Evil standards, creating a breed of super soldiers and kidnapping the Queen of England and create his own world based off of his image. Trust me, it is as silly as it sounds. Lt. Guile (Jean Claude Van Damme) approaches the situation in that he has to save the hostages and hopefully put Bison on ice, once and for all, thus stopping his plans for world domination. From there on in, the movie is basically an almost two hour fan service with various subplots with almost all the characters from the Street Fighter universe. Zangief and Dee Jay work for M. Bison as Muscle and Computer Technician, respectively. Chun-Li, Balrog and E. Honda are all out for get revenge and Ken and Ryu are professional fighters hoping to score a battle against the vain Vega and evil Sagat. Like I said, the rest of the movie is nothing short of fan service, since all the actors deliver some truly awful one liners aside, Van Damme's Guile almost sounds like Tommy Wiseau ("The Room") when you close your eyes, and the whole plot itself is actually quite boring. Well, why in the world would someone defend this movie then? I'll give you three reasons, two are part of the movie, and one is a personal thing. 1. Raul Julia's M. Bison. A villain who looks rather powerful should be given a great performance. While Raul Julia did die after this movie was over, there is no denying that he went out with a bang rather than whimper. His performance is laughably over the top, but at no point do you look at his face and see a man who seems to think he's in a movie, and as a result, he makes the movie quite amazing. If anything, he gives us a theatrical villain which, for his character, works very well. 2. There was a lot of room for potential here. Let's be honest, writing a movie is easy, but writing a good movie is hard. The director (Who is also the writer) took a fighting video game and crafted a movie out of it, and a fairly well done one at that. Sure, not in execution, but in originality, it works. 3. It was a movie from my childhood. I was a child of the 90's, and as such, I can remember my parents letting me watch this at a very young age, and it was awesome. Damn the Nostalgia factor, but it's what makes this movie really good. I can remember how intimidated I was in the final battle scenes, and how cool M. Bison was to me (in that over the top Saturday Morning Cartoon style of cool). This movie is a very easy one to attack for just not being good, but understand from my point of view, even knowing how bad it is, having no character development, some truly cheesy one liners and awful performances, including Van Damme giving a performance that makes him sound like Tommy Wiseau if he smoked cigarettes for ten years and you closed your eyes real tight, I still like it. It's cheesy, terrible and ridiculous, but all you need to know is that Raul Julia delivers some of the best lines for years to come, and you know you are dealing with a kind of cult classic when one of the film's greatest lines is, "This is merely superconductor electromagnetism. Surely, you've heard of it." In other words, go see this movie if you haven't already. 7/10.

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• NOT the worst movie ever - but not

  dtm6662002-08-09

  Some people claim this is a bad movie... true. Some people claim this movie is a bad translation of the video game it's supposed to be based on... true. Some people claim it's the worst ever... trust me, I've seen worse. While it does have its Christmas list of bad things (poor script, ugly sets, subpar acting), it's good for a laugh or two because of the negatives... at the same time however, any dedicated fan of the Street Fighter games will find this as an insult because it does not properly adapt the video game... Is it a bad movie? Sure it is... but I've seen my share of bad movies and I can tell that this isn't the absolute worst!

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• Enjoyably silly

  Tito-81998-11-11

  As a huge fan of the video game that is the basis for this movie, I felt compelled to watch it even though I have never been much of a Van Damme fan. To my surprise, I found this film to be a lot of fun. By action movie standards, the silly one-liners work pretty well, and it was fun to see the video game characters come to life, even if they did make a few changes to the basic plot of the game. All things considered, I'm glad I took the time to watch "Street Fighter". It's nothing memorable, but if you're in the mood to watch some silly action fluff, then I'd say that it's time well wasted.

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• A good and enjoyable movie

  saxon_princess2007-04-24

  Okay, so not all of my family agrees on the movie. But, I enjoyed it from the first time I saw it on T.V. The two main actors, Raul Julia and Jean-Claude Van Damme portray their characters well, though Kylie Monigue turned me off her character a little. Be in mind that being based on a video game it can not be perfected to follow the games exactly. In general the movie is centred around two forces based in Shadaloo, where A.N. (Allied Nation) hostages are taken by General M. Bison (Raul Julia) and unless is demands are met, he'll kill every single hostage is has. It is up to the U.N. leader, military commanding officer Colonel William F. Guile and his army to rescue them. They are joined along the way, under unfortunate circumstances, by a ninja journalist Chun-Li Zang (the voice of Mulan) her two friends a former sumo-wrestler E. Honda (Peter Navy Tuiasosopo) and former boxer Balrog (Grand L. Bush) as well as two thieves, Ryu Hoshi (Bryon Mann) and Ken Masters (Damian Chapa). A good enjoyable movie with some light class actors and a well thought out plot . Okay so not every person in the world will love this, but when you want something for a rainy day (like it is out here) then this is the type of movie I'd recommend. Overall I gave it 10/10 because not only is Jean-Claude Van Damme one of my favourite actors, everyone of his movies entertains me greatly, not to mention the awesome fighting scenes. For fans of Jean-Claude Van Damme who have not seen many of his movies I recommend that you see The Replicant, Timecop and maybe Universal Soldier (if you don't mind a little bit of a corny actors based around him).

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• Vastly Underrated

  Bromhidrosis2005-07-05

  I really don't see why most everyone has a problem with this movie. The storyline is solid, and is, contrary to what most people believe, somewhat true to the story. Like it or not, Guile and Chun-Li are meant to be the main characters in SF2 and the movie reflects this. In the games, their endings are directly tied to Bison. Of the remaining 14 characters (obviously not counting Bison,) only one other is: Cammy's, and that's only because Bison tells her about her amnesia. As for the casting, it was very well done. The only problems I saw/heard are Van-Damme's French accent, Dhalsim's casting as a doctor, which WAS well done despite being unfaithful to the game, T. Hawk's lack of height (I think Rainwater is shorter than Van-Damme) and Chapa's short hair. Otherwise, everything else was spot-on, especially the casting for Bison. Raul Julia is the only person that I think could've done it. He's a fairly versatile actor AND he looks like Bison. A couple other characters were miscasted like Dhalsim, but the excellent acting made up for that. The combination of Charlie and Blanka was both acceptable and unacceptable. How? Street Fighter Alpha didn't come out until a year after this film did, but both Blanka's and Guile's endings disprove the combination. Getting back to the story, it was actually believable for not being based around a tournament like SF2 is. Being forced into a three day timetable by Bison's ransom demands made the movie seem all the more action-packed, to me at least. The scene between Bison and Chun-Li in Bison's quarters could've been cut out, though, except for the part where Bison was about to get his butt kicked by Chun-Li. The final battle between Bison and Guile was the most blatantly choreographed yet still exciting thing I had ever seen in a martial arts movie up to that point, other than the odd scene from a few Jackie Chan movies. The sound was pretty horrible. Generic rap somehow found its way into the movie in the cage fighting arena scene, and I swear I heard it again when I played the god-awful SF3: Third Strike. That one should've been permanently shelved. The orchestrated music that made it into the movie was nearly impossible to hear, although some of it was vaguely reminiscent of Guile's stage in SF2. The worst part was the lack of music from the game. A symphony orchestra doing all the music from the characters that made it into the movie (so no Fei-Long or Akuma) would've been great. So would have the Amiga CD32 version of Super Turbo if it was out or the arcade version of Super. Many of the characters signature moves are not present. I counted one Hadouken (to Vega in the Ryu+Ken vs. Vega+Sagat fight in Bison's quarters, very easy to miss as it's done at point-blank range,) a few flash kicks (minus the special effect,) and one Psycho Crusher (I think that's the name.) No Sonic Boom, no Shoryuken, no anything else. Overall, there are a few glaring issues (sound and lack of special moves mostly,) but it's still very enjoyable. 7/10 Recommended to: Martial arts fans Van-Damme fans Street Fighter fans Not Recommended to: Street Fighter fans who believe Ryu and Ken are supposed to be the main characters without realizing only three endings out of sixteen people (not counting Bison and including Akuma) are actually tied to Bison himself.

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