THE STORY – Estranged street fighters Ryu and Ken Masters get thrown back into combat when the mysterious Chun-Li recruits them for the next World Warrior Tournament — a brutal clash of fists, fate and fury. However, behind the battle royale lies a deadly conspiracy that forces them to face off against each other and the demons from their past.
THE CAST – Noah Centineo, Andrew Koji, Callina Liang, Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoa’i, David Dastmalchian, Cody Rhodes, Eric André, Andrew Schulz, Vidyut Jammwal, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson & Jason Momoa
THE TEAM – Kitao Sakurai (Director/Writer) & T.J. Fixman (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 120 Minutes
“Street Fighter” has had many lives for a video game with no real plot. Sure, the one-on-one fighting game’s characters have backstories in the game’s literature, but neither they nor the plot setup affects gameplay. You choose your fighter and punch, kick, and block your way through enough fights to win a tournament. That’s it. Yet artists around the world have adapted the game into multiple manga series, multiple Japanese anime series, an American animated series, comic books, and now three live-action films. Surely the allure of the game’s popularity serves as a reason for this: “Street Fighter II,” the game that has served as the main inspiration for every adaptation and sequel since, is one of the best-selling video games of all time and laid the template for a whole genre of imitators to follow, most notably “Mortal Kombat,” which followed “Street Fighter” to cinemas in the ‘90s. While both “Street Fighter” and “Mortal Kombat” films were savaged by critics, they made bank at the box office, and since Hollywood in the 2020s can seemingly only spend money on well-known IP, both series have been rebooted.
Kitao Sakurai (“Bad Trip”) may seem like an odd choice to take on this material, but the film’s anime-style opening sequence gets things off to a decent start. Remixing elements of every “Street Fighter” game and film into a new(-ish) story, Sakurai introduces us to Ken (Noah Centineo) and Ryu (Andrew Koji) during the 1987 World Warrior Tournament. Best friends from different backgrounds (Ryu, an orphan; Ken, an American misfit) study martial arts under the same master, Gouken (Don Lee), and Ryu makes it to the tournament’s final round, where he must face the dangerous Sagat. Sagat trounces Ryu at first, causing Ryu to abandon his master’s teachings and give in to the darkness inside him. Ryu beats Sagat, but unleashes a greater danger: Akuma (Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoa’i), a dark demon who taunts Ryu and pushes him further from the light. Ken is shaken by the force of Ryu’s victory, believing he could never possess such power, but Master Gouken reminds him that greatness isn’t always found in the ring, and tasks him with an important job: Protecting Ryu from himself. This opening animation sets the tone so perfectly that you almost wish the whole film had been told in that medium; the stylized violence feels both exciting and dangerous, thanks to plenty of blood, a kinetic techno score by Leo Birenberg and Zach Robinson, and title cards dropped for maximum audience reaction.
Unfortunately, after this sequence, the film moves ahead six years to 1993, and the live action kicks in. In an expository news report, we learn that after Master Gouken’s death, Ken has been making waves as a massively popular bad-boy fighter with multiple endorsement deals (the clips of commercials for Duracell batteries and Jolt Cola are hilariously period-accurate), while Ryu has gone MIA. In order to draw him out of hiding, the villainous M. Bison (David Dastmalchian) decides to hold a second World Warrior Tournament and sends his envoy Chun-Li (Callina Liang), an undercover Interpol agent targeting Bison for killing her father, to personally invite the world’s eight best fighters, including Ken and Ryu, to take part. At the first World Warrior Tournament, Bison saw Ryu unleash the power of Akuma and became obsessed with claiming that power for himself. When Akuma tells Ryu that he will kill whoever wins the tournament, Ryu tries to warn Ken. Years and distance have frayed their brotherly bond, though, and Ken refuses to give up his moment to shine outside Ryu’s shadow, essentially forcing Ryu to enter the tournament if he wants to save him.
If this all seems overly complicated for a movie that essentially only exists to watch martial arts badasses fight each other, well, the film even struggles to keep up. While the character building for Ken and Ryu gets enough focus to serve as the film’s narrative spine, the world-building is practically nonexistent, to the point that it’s not even clear who Bison is. He could be a local government leader or the supreme leader of a sovereign nation, a titan of industry or a military commander, or even just a random guy with enough money to fund endless experiments to harness what he calls “Psycho Power.” Dastmalchian goes all in with his performance, latching onto Bison’s lust for power and curdling it into a more human lust for anything that moves. Rolling his eyes into the back of his head as he can barely contain himself, sniffing burning flesh like it’s an aphrodisiac, he’s an equal-opportunity lech, verbally caressing both his clawed henchman Vega (Orville Peck, cheekily taking his first film role in an even bigger mask than usual) and bodyguard Juli (Rayna Vallandingham). The film’s overall horniness is one of its biggest, most pleasant surprises, ogling every single cast member and taking the piss out of the typically stoic male fighting characters by giving them genuine emotion (Ryu calms himself before fights by listening to “What’s Up” by 4 Non Blondes) or underlining their homoerotic tendencies (Cody Rhodes’s quintessential American soldier Guile constantly stumbles – both knowingly and unknowingly – into homoeroticism), and Dastmalchian’s performance leads the way with its unrestrained villainy, which the actor heightens by carefully choosing the moments where he goes over the top.
While the whole cast has fun playing their roles just slightly larger than life, most audience members care more about how they look while fighting than what quips they crack in between rounds. Thankfully, the highly energetic fight scenes find fun, exciting ways to visualize many of the video game’s most famous special moves, like E. Honda’s Hundred Hand Slap or Guile’s Flash Kick. The biggest set piece, however, belongs to Blanka (Jason Momoa), a green-skinned, electrified mutant who looks entirely CGI. Only occasionally does he look like he’s physically part of the scene, mostly when he’s moving. The visual effects in the film’s fighting scenes look appropriately cartoony. Still, the character’s fantastical design doesn’t fit the world the film has established, and the wonky effects make him stick out even more.
After Blanka’s big scene, the film’s relentless pace and exuberant visuals start to grate, and by the unnecessary late showdown between Ryu and Ken just before the final battle, it’s exhausting. Sakurai and T.J. Fixman’s screenplay ties itself in knots to bloat it to two hours, and while it’s fun to see childhood-favorite characters mashed up against each other like action figures, there’s no real suspense about how any of the fights play out. This makes the final fight, in particular, an ordeal, as all the aura farming tricks Sakurai deployed earlier have lost their potency. Combined with a plot that barely hangs together (truly, the aura farming does a lot to paper over awkward scene transitions and plot holes), it makes for a deflating ending to an otherwise fun popcorn flick. For just over half its length, though, “Street Fighter” hits the sweet spot for a video game adaptation: it takes itself unseriously without veering into camp, bringing its characters and superhuman abilities to life just about as seamlessly as possible. It’s easily the best fighting game adaptation yet. Not the highest bar to clear, but “Street Fighter” gets the job done.
