Kung fu fighting.
Sounds like the perfect base for a great action movie. Unfortunately, a couple of rotten eggs found their way into “”Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li””.
“”Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li”” centers around one person: Chun-Li. After her father is taken by Bison (Neal McDonough), a powerful crime lord, Chun-Li (Kristin Kreuk) gives up her life of luxury to find the man who took her father from her. After she receives a mysterious ancient Chinese scroll, Chun-Li leaves to go to Bangkok to seek out Gen (Robin Shou) and “”forget the person she used to be””. Chun-Li learns to become more agile and draws energy from her surroundings. With the help of Interpol cop Charlie Nash (Chris Klein) and homicide detective Maya Sunee (Moon Bloodgood), Chun-Li and Gen set out to take down Bison.
While this movie did have a good storyline, it did not have good acting. Neal McDonough tried to pull some sort of accent. I could not tell if it was Scottish, Chinese or possibly both, but in any case it sounded terrible and just got annoying. Klein tries to adapt the laid back attitude his character, Oz, had in “”American Pie”” to an action movie and it just comes off stupid. If the rest of the audience and I could not take him seriously, then I don’t think Bison could either.
Another character I couldn’t take seriously was Maya Sunee. Question: since when do homicide detectives dress like prostitutes? The only thing I liked about her was her gold handcuffs and even then, I wasn’t sure if those were used for arrests or some erotic fantasy of hers. The only good acting done in this movie is by Michael Clarke Duncan who plays Balrog. He didn’t have a lot of dialogue, but considering everyone else’s dialogue was horrendous, I wouldn’t consider that a bad thing. I love seeing Duncan’s fight scenes because he is the quintessential body guard and seeing him beat up Gen with a massive carbon dioxide tank was awesome.
The other person I found entertaining was Vega who wore a chrome mask and had claws like Wolverine, except they didn’t come out of his hands. The slow motion action scenes are the only things, other than Balrog and Vega, that made this movie interesting. It was like “”Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon”” without the excessive flying through the air like fairies. While this movie proved to be better than “”Push””, I still would not recommend this it to anyone.
Rating: ** 1/2
