Made 15 years after Jean Claude Van Damme donned a blue beret to star in the first live-action adaptation of the popular Capcom video game, I wonder if it'll be another 15 before they try again after this second failure.
A melting pot of recycled ideas, not many of which have been taken from the Street Fighter universe, this may as well have been called Chun-Li Begins. The Legend of Chun-Li takes cues from Christopher Nolan's hit Batman reboot and the similarly back-to-basics Superman series Smallville, with Kristin Kreuk (a half-Chinese Canadian) taking the lead as Chun-Li.
Ming-Na played the role in the 1994 Streetfighter (directed by Steven E. de Souza) and this version sees her taking centre stage. But that isn't the only thing that distinguishes the two films. Gone are the primary colours and theatrics and instead we have a "real world" story with a handful of fantasy elements.
Shadaloo is no longer a place but the name of a criminal organisation, pronounced Shadal-ow. M. Bison isn't the elaborately dressed cartoon dictator fans are familiar with, instead he's smartly dressed gangster with an Irish accent.
As befits a martial arts movie, this is a revenge tale but there's a lot of other stuff going on too. Whole sub-plots that serve no purpose. The Legend of Chun-Li doesn't remind you of the Street Fighter game but it does remind you of a lot of other movies. Not only the aforementioned superhero adventures either. Every scene or plot point gives you a feeling of deja-vu. Director Andrzej Bartkowiak even rips off a memorable scene from one of his own movies (Romeo Must Die, 2000). Several moments (especially the ending) imitate Batman Begins but the results are similar to Catwoman (Pitof, 2004).
Tipping its hat to video game predecessors by featuring Robin Shou, this is a curious failure, the whole thing feels more like a TV pilot or a B-movie than the major motion picture it's supposed to be.
A melting pot of recycled ideas, not many of which have been taken from the Street Fighter universe, this may as well have been called Chun-Li Begins. The Legend of Chun-Li takes cues from Christopher Nolan's hit Batman reboot and the similarly back-to-basics Superman series Smallville, with Kristin Kreuk (a half-Chinese Canadian) taking the lead as Chun-Li.
Ming-Na played the role in the 1994 Streetfighter (directed by Steven E. de Souza) and this version sees her taking centre stage. But that isn't the only thing that distinguishes the two films. Gone are the primary colours and theatrics and instead we have a "real world" story with a handful of fantasy elements.
Shadaloo is no longer a place but the name of a criminal organisation, pronounced Shadal-ow. M. Bison isn't the elaborately dressed cartoon dictator fans are familiar with, instead he's smartly dressed gangster with an Irish accent.
As befits a martial arts movie, this is a revenge tale but there's a lot of other stuff going on too. Whole sub-plots that serve no purpose. The Legend of Chun-Li doesn't remind you of the Street Fighter game but it does remind you of a lot of other movies. Not only the aforementioned superhero adventures either. Every scene or plot point gives you a feeling of deja-vu. Director Andrzej Bartkowiak even rips off a memorable scene from one of his own movies (Romeo Must Die, 2000). Several moments (especially the ending) imitate Batman Begins but the results are similar to Catwoman (Pitof, 2004).
Tipping its hat to video game predecessors by featuring Robin Shou, this is a curious failure, the whole thing feels more like a TV pilot or a B-movie than the major motion picture it's supposed to be.