Film Discussion of the Week: Street Fighter (The Movie)

As someone who doesn't like Street Fighter 2 I really like this movie and enjoy watching it a lot, it's very little like the game it's based on and that's just fantastic. Every change was for the better.

Van Damme is great in it despite the off-camera problems, Juliá is fantastic, I really like the big dumb goon guy (Zangief?), and the rest are all great too.

Thankfully being a Street Fighter fan is not even remotely required, this movie can be fully enjoyed all on it's own, just like the excellent Mortal Kombat movie.

It's always a fun time, I need to watch this again.

I'm ashamed to admit this, but despite both being a fan of the series and knowing about the movie (both for years), I've never seen it.

My public library had this so I rented it. Here's my review:

"This movie is pretty awful. It has almost nothing to do with Street Fighter. People are not even fighting in the streets. Sure it has most of the iconic characters, but none of them look like their character from the game. For some reason Guile is the main character, and he is played by the Muscle from Brussel. It is cool that the filmmakers wanted an actor who could perhaps done some of the moves that the video game character does, but van Damme is so under-utilized it becomes totally pointless to have him as Guile. Guile is American, but van Damme has the least American accent of all of them. Ryu, Balrog and Ken look retarded, M. Bison looks way too skinny, E. Honda is Hawaiian instead of Japanese for no reason, Blanka looks like an abomination, Sagat looks ridiculous as a businessman, Cammy and Chun-Li are alright and Zangief looks surprisingly good though. My main problem with this movie is that it feels nothing like the video game. The fighting choreography is some of the worst I have seen in a "serious" movie. Not a single punch or kick is performed without cutting around it like crazy. Where are all of the over-top signature moves? Why is the plot so boring? Why did I watch this?" 1.5/5