Seeing Moon Bloodgood work so hard in the subpar Terminator Salvation, I remembered how she worked equally hard alongside Kristin Kreuk earlier this year in an even worse flick.
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-LiRelease: 02.27.09
DVD Release: 06.30.09
Rated PG-13
1 hour, 36 minutes
Group Rental
After a performance, accomplished concert pianist Chun-Li (Kristin Kreuk, TV: Smallville) finds an ancient Chinese scroll left in her dressing room. The scroll's jist is that her hands weren't made for piano playing, they were made for ass-whooping. Chun-Li straps on her boots made for walking and hits the mean streets of Bangkok. A master named Gen teaches her to focus her anger into extreme whoopitude and lets her loose against the evil Shadaloo. Conveniently, Shadaloo is headquartered in Bangkok and led by Bison (Neal McDonough, Walking Tall), the soulless man who kidnapped her father years ago to use him towards sinister ends.
Much of that plot is spoon-fed to audiences twice-around; visually and through extensive voiceover by Chun-Li. Kreuk is exceptional; too bad everything else in Street Fighter isn't. She looks awesome in a blue throwback dress and gold ankle boots as the night club seductress, but the action sequence that follows is poorly shot. I blinked and totally missed her battle with Vega. The final confrontation is more brutal than expected, but that's a long time to wait for a quality fight.
In the meantime, you have to watch Kreuk tread water above the largely incoherent and implausible story. Moon Bloodgood (Terminator Salvation) plays Bangkok Detective Maya Sunee well while looking steamy hot in either tank tops or just her bra (winning her the nickname Boobgood). Conversely, as Charlie Nash, Chris Klein (American Dreamz) and his ham-fisted acting made me throw up in my mouth a little every time he spoke with his weird embellished manner.
I had high hopes Street Fighter would be a cleansing fire for Kristin Kreuk, burning away the years of bad writing Smallville doused upon her as Lana Lang. Through it all, she's managed to keep her head high, even when the stench becomes unbearable.
You throw up in your mouth? Funny.
ReplyDeleteI almost want to see the film for the last fight you spoke of. Too bad the film blows.
How could they frak up the Vega fight? Didn't they see the animated movie?
I still can't get over how amazingly BAD Klein was. Maybe he was supposed to be, but ugh!
ReplyDeleteSF's fights were so sucky, that the final fight just seemed better than it probably was. They had no excuse turning Vega into such a bitch.
The animated movie...I'd forgotten all about that. Soemone's reaching back.
I am reaching back. Back to something good.
ReplyDeleteWell, I will not be seeing this until it is on tv probably and I have nothing else better to do.
Good call. Now I need to go put animated Street Fighter on my NFQ.
ReplyDeleteGet the unrated version. There is not much difference between the two though.
ReplyDeleteThanks, I'll make sure I do. I normally go for UR if available.
ReplyDeleteto me this movie was good, maybe is the pessimism inherited from it predecessor, or for the other afraid about movies based in video games, besides you can denied that beauty of Kristen Kreuk help a lot to forget the mistakes of the movie.
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