Anyone who remembers the awful 1994 Jean Claude Van Damme/Raul Julia film based on the ancient video game "Street Fighter" will be shocked at how much better the new film built around the game's characters is.
No, it's not particularly good. The villains are either ninja-clones or generic black-suited thugs. The story is a straight vengeance tale about a daughter seeking to punish the man who murdered her dad. But the casting works, the settings (Bangkok and Hong Kong) are exotic and the martial-arts brawls are professionally mounted.
Kristin Kreuk, a mere slip of a thing from TV's "Smallville," plays Chun Li, concert pianist/martial artist. I'm guessing she never got a bad review in her life. The lady kicks butt.
But when she was a child, her dad, a fellow mixed up with mobsters, disappeared. Now an adult, Chun Li must go to Bangkok and face her destiny and the baddie who took daddy.
That would be Neal McDonough, blue-eyed, white-haired heavy for our times. This outing, he tries a wee Irish accent in playing this ruthless mob boss. The accent, alas, she comes and goes. Begorrah!
Michael Clarke Duncan is the man-mountain chief-henchman. Chris Klein, taking a shot at showing us some edge, is an Interpol agent on the bad guys' trail and ultra-hottie Moon Bloodgood is his busty Bangkok cop counterpart.
There's this "Order of the Web" which needs to train Chun Li (Robin Shou is the mystical master), a "White Rose" that plays into the plot and serious beat-downs. The violence is neck-snapping, take-a-man's-gun-and-shoot-him-in-the-ear graphic. Did I mention the lesbian bar pick-up scene?
The dialogue, some of it Chun Li's voice-over, is arch and generic, but appropriately so. And the bad guy gets the best lines. Always.
The director, Andrzej Bartkowiak, did the film of the game "Doom," so don't go getting your hopes up. At least he didn't Uwe Boll himself this time.
I'd say this is roughly 20 times better than the first "Street Fighter" movie. It's still a waste of time, but unlike the game, it's over in 95 minutes. Nobody will accuse you of wasting your life.
"Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li" is rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and martial arts action, and some sensuality. Running time: 95 minutes.