I enjoy martial arts movies of all ilk, so perhaps you should know that.
I see reviews for this film at both extremes. Folks gushing seemingly uncontrollably about it and others condemning it completely. I have no dog in this fight. As of this writing, there are 3,146 voters rating this film at 8.4. I will state that there are many fabulous and fantastic films out there done to much higher standards that are currently ranked lower than this film. This is no insult to this film, as it was done with limited resources, but eight point four seems a bit high for the quality we have here. I will certainly give it a solid six.
I think fans of the genre are the ones most likely to see this film, so the high rating is understandable in that regard. Furthermore, it was aired initially as a webisode. I sort of stumbled on the movie and decided to watch it despite my no great attachment to the Street Fighter genre. I played the game back in the day, but that's about it. I had a rudimentary understanding of who the prime characters were, but had to learn the others. Fortunately, there are few. This film employed simple locations and scenery, and it all felt right except for a powerline swath of trees going up one hillside that kept showing up in shots. It dragged me away from their world if but only for a moment. A distraction.
Otherwise, the production value seemed decent and I settled in to watched it. I actually found the acting and writing a bit rough at first blush. It had a thinner, made for teevee feel (crude dialog excepted), but perhaps it was more of a mini-series quality since it also runs so long (2hr20min). I decided to take the roughness as 'quaint' and some of the dialog as 'real-world' and that made it work for me, but I wondered about the director. So I looked up the details and learned that this was an independent "work of love" project by the young director/actors/writers/martial artists Joey Ansah and Christian Howard, who are also fans of the genre. Well, that sort of explains that then. Still getting his director legs under himself seems plausible, but his passion for the story pushes it along. The writing seemed rough at times, but flowed fine elsewhere. There was an unevenness, but I feel their enthusiasm added a positive element to the film and I like that. It allows me to look past its rough edges and we're getting a richer back story because of it. No, that doesn't fix the acting or the cringes in some odd scenes, but the characters were done well enough and I was engaged with all of them, even our nemesis. It would be impossible for me to pick apart any of the details of the story as I have not followed the genre, but I enjoyed the story well enough.
Only one other reviewer I read complained about this next item: the ending. ***This could be considered a spoiler***, so you can stop reading now if you deeply care, but I am sure someday I will understand why the film sort of just petered out. I was missing the traditional climax culminating from the struggle between the characters. There was some very good tension built up in that struggle and then there was none of the expected satisfaction. I was not frustrated, but instead disappointed. I would watch a sequel of the same making (same film style) and perhaps that is the intent. I don't know. It may have been a singular work of love. Should a second 'episode' get funded, I would expect better from Ansah and Howard and I would suppose they could do it.
Fans of the genre will love it while fans of martial arts movies should like it as I did, too. Fans of movies will have to decide for themselves.
I see reviews for this film at both extremes. Folks gushing seemingly uncontrollably about it and others condemning it completely. I have no dog in this fight. As of this writing, there are 3,146 voters rating this film at 8.4. I will state that there are many fabulous and fantastic films out there done to much higher standards that are currently ranked lower than this film. This is no insult to this film, as it was done with limited resources, but eight point four seems a bit high for the quality we have here. I will certainly give it a solid six.
I think fans of the genre are the ones most likely to see this film, so the high rating is understandable in that regard. Furthermore, it was aired initially as a webisode. I sort of stumbled on the movie and decided to watch it despite my no great attachment to the Street Fighter genre. I played the game back in the day, but that's about it. I had a rudimentary understanding of who the prime characters were, but had to learn the others. Fortunately, there are few. This film employed simple locations and scenery, and it all felt right except for a powerline swath of trees going up one hillside that kept showing up in shots. It dragged me away from their world if but only for a moment. A distraction.
Otherwise, the production value seemed decent and I settled in to watched it. I actually found the acting and writing a bit rough at first blush. It had a thinner, made for teevee feel (crude dialog excepted), but perhaps it was more of a mini-series quality since it also runs so long (2hr20min). I decided to take the roughness as 'quaint' and some of the dialog as 'real-world' and that made it work for me, but I wondered about the director. So I looked up the details and learned that this was an independent "work of love" project by the young director/actors/writers/martial artists Joey Ansah and Christian Howard, who are also fans of the genre. Well, that sort of explains that then. Still getting his director legs under himself seems plausible, but his passion for the story pushes it along. The writing seemed rough at times, but flowed fine elsewhere. There was an unevenness, but I feel their enthusiasm added a positive element to the film and I like that. It allows me to look past its rough edges and we're getting a richer back story because of it. No, that doesn't fix the acting or the cringes in some odd scenes, but the characters were done well enough and I was engaged with all of them, even our nemesis. It would be impossible for me to pick apart any of the details of the story as I have not followed the genre, but I enjoyed the story well enough.
Only one other reviewer I read complained about this next item: the ending. ***This could be considered a spoiler***, so you can stop reading now if you deeply care, but I am sure someday I will understand why the film sort of just petered out. I was missing the traditional climax culminating from the struggle between the characters. There was some very good tension built up in that struggle and then there was none of the expected satisfaction. I was not frustrated, but instead disappointed. I would watch a sequel of the same making (same film style) and perhaps that is the intent. I don't know. It may have been a singular work of love. Should a second 'episode' get funded, I would expect better from Ansah and Howard and I would suppose they could do it.
Fans of the genre will love it while fans of martial arts movies should like it as I did, too. Fans of movies will have to decide for themselves.