by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $14.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Andrew Koji, Noah Centineo, Callina Lian, Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoai, David Dastmalchian, Cody Rhodes, Andrew Schulz, Eric André, Vidyut Jammwal, Orville Peck, Olivier Richters, Hirooki Goto, Rayna Vallandingham, Alexander Volkanovski, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Jason Momoa
Intro:
… an entertaining mess of ideas …
Kitao Sakurai has come a long way from being one of the demon triplets in Kevin Smith’s Dogma. He has built a fascinating directorial acumen over the past decade-and-a-half, from Adult Swim curios, to collaborating with Eric André both on the anti-talk show The Eric André Show and the current champion of hidden camera prank cinema, Bad Trip, and handling some streaming series like Beef and Twisted Metal. And yet, for all the chaos that he’s immersed himself in as a creative, helming an adaptation of Street Fighter feels like something that he’s been working up to since the beginning. Specifically, his 2010 feature debut Aardvark, a low-budget Cleveland-set dramatic thriller that contrasted the nature of self-defence in martial arts, with a much darker perspective on what it would take to use that power for bloodthirsty ends.
It’s that throughline that informs a lot of what Sakurai is aiming for with his take on Street Fighter, both as director and co-writer (alongside Ratchet & Clank: Future and Resistance 2 scribe T.J. Fixman… who also wrote the Ratchet & Clank movie, but let’s not get into that). Correcting the casting sprawl that ended up diluting the memetic 1994 film, the focus on Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken (Noah Centineo) gives the story a strong focus that helps fill out its run time. There are other icons in attendance, from Callina Liang absolutely crushing it as Chun-Li, David Dastmalchian playing M. Bison as an over-eloquent goner (once again providing a level of strangeness as only DD can), and Jason Momoa giving a surprising amount of heart and charm to the all-time overpowered favourite Blanka. But at its core, it’s about two found brothers wrestling with their inner demons; Ryu struggling with the demonic darkness and Ken warping under the seduction of the spotlight.
While the character drama and the gloriously-choreographed fight scenes provide the recognisable rush that you’d want from this nostalgic ‘90s property (a lot of iconic moves get the translation they deserve), the film as a whole feels like a collection of elements that could have worked great on their own… but aren’t quite as fun when put together. The visual presentation hits the right balance of moodiness and cartoonish fidelity, at times feeling like the characters have crashed through the set into a John Wick movie being shot next door, but then the flashback sequences kick in and the style takes a drastic turn. Now, the flashbacks themselves are beautifully done, hand-animated by studio Titmouse in the style of 1994’s Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, but it clashes with the live-action footage, especially during the more tense crosscutting sequences. It just feels like they should have gone with one or the other, not careened between them.
Then there’s the film’s sense of humour, which aside from a few cute references (Dastmalchian even provides a retweak of one of Raul Julia’s legendary quips from the 1994 adaptation) seems to mostly rely on gay jokes. It’s tempting to consider this just another part of the overall ‘90s throwback vibe, where this calibre of yuks was seemingly everywhere, but surely that kind of nostalgia draw should be reserved for aesthetics worth bringing back, no? It doesn’t fit particularly well next to the more earnest attempts at pathos, with certain performances like Andrew “the only thing he could do is decide if it’s consensual or not” Schulz as Dan Hibiki only serving that side of the script, as opposed to anything to do with Street Fighter itself.
And that’s without getting into the soundtrack, which is an absolute mess. Its lack of coherence with the film’s period setting (taking place in 1993 to link in with Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers) is a bit irritating, but understandable; 50 Cent as Balrog laying down some one-twos with ‘Many Men’ playing in the background kind of works. But the needle drops overall are used with a tacky aggressiveness akin to Suicide Squad, a handful of melodramatic remixes that would be more fitting for the film’s trailer are inexplicably in the actual film itself, and the finale hinges on a song that nearly-two-decades’ worth of meme value, along with its use in TMNT: Mutant Mayhem and even Masters of the Universe earlier this year, have made all but impossible to take seriously as the film’s big emotional centrepiece. Both the tone and the production are all over the damn place, which ends up getting in the way of the flashy, high-speed throwdowns and arcade cabinet cheese.
Street Fighter is an entertaining mess of ideas that never really coalesces into a unified feature. The action scenes are fantastic, and its reliance on physical sets gives it an edge over its cinematic rival in the recent Mortal Kombat films… Otherwise, its tonal strains, mishmash of visual and sonic stylistic cues, and all-character-no-narrative sequel-bait conclusion hold it back from being as great as it could have been. Still, for all its faults, it’s a lot more focused and faithful than the 1994 film, and it’s a far cry from the outright mistake that is The Legend of Chun-Li; fans of the franchise have finally got a decent live-action adaptation.
