Flash Kick This One
I haven’t seen every video game or comic book film adaptation, but of those I have seen, one the cheesiest would have to be Street Fighter. As a big fan of Van Damme’s, it’s an unfortunate entry into his career but it is what it is.
I think one of the worst aspects of the film is how the makers tried to fit the entire Super Street Fighter II cast into the movie. You have Van Damme as Guile, Raul Julia as Bison, Ming-Na as Chun-Li, Kylie Minogue as Cammy, Gregg Rainwater as T-Hawk – the list goes on, but what I think really turned off fans of the Street Fighter lore was the poor acting and scripted roles these characters had.
Take Chun-Li, Balrog, and E. Honda for example. Together, this trio is a news crew, with Balrog as cameraman and Chun-Li as the reporter. We see this group very early in the film as Guile arrives in Shadaloo, Bison’s base of operations. An international force led by Guile is set to attack Bison’s fortress to free sixty-three hostages before Bison executes them, if his twenty billion dollar demand isn’t met that is. Guile and his small army have exactly seventy-two hours, according to the big red countdown timer mounted inside Bison’s fortress.
Meanwhile, Ryu, Ken, Sagat, and Vega are all introduced. Ken and Ryu trick Sagat and Vega into thinking they’ve suddenly turned bad so that Sagat and Vega will lead them to Bison, where of course they eventually join up with Chun-Li, Honda, and Balrog, who in turn have joined up with Guile, Cammy, and T-Hawk, etc. Much of the film is so predictable and forced that it’s just hard to watch. There actually isn’t a lot of action either when you get right down to it – Van Damme does one complete fight scene (against Bison) and little else, although some of the other less interesting actors and roles fight more often, like Ryu and Ken. It should also be noted that Blanka is literally being created by Bison and his scientist who is forced to turn one of the hostages (Charlie, Guile’s friend), into this hideous monster. Charlie is strapped into a chamber with a half dozen IV bags and is forced to watch news and war video of crime and other bad stuff and this gets him mad (of course, right?). Meanwhile his muscle mass is nearly doubled and for some reason his skin turns green and his hair grows out and turns orange.
It also doesn’t help that in probably about a dozen scenes, it seems almost like the film is making fun of itself, or at least making very embarrassing attempts at comedy. Take Zangief’s role, for example. They made the Russian brute seem like a total idiot, not even realizing until the very end of the film that M Bison was a “bad guy,” at which point Zangief suddenly turns good; it’s just embarrassing to watch.
About the only saving grace of this film was some of the martial arts action. Van Damme was still doing those cool kicks he is so known for when this film was produced and it’s nice to see those, although you have to stick through the first eighty minutes of the film to get to that point. Regardless, it’s not enough to save what is a poor film on many levels.
Extreme Edition Blu-ray
I don’t think there is any doubt that this Blu-ray was released this week in hopes to cash in on the Street Fighter craze that is capturing the targeted demographic right now, as the much anticipated Street Fighter IV gets ready to unleash on the 360 and PS3 next week. That said, you can tell this Blu-ray was rushed or frankly not treated well at all. The visual quality is nothing short of shockingly bad in several scenes, with more grain on screen than I have ever seen before. Other times, I would actually say most times, the film looks good to very good, but there are some unbelievable poor looking scenes that tarnish not only this release but I think Universal’s strong track record of high (visual) quality releases. The audio, DTS-HD 5.1, does well enough, but some of the dialogue will make you cringe it’s that cheesy.
For extras, there are a lot in number, but they don’t add up to much at all except for the most ardent fans of the movie and Street Fighter in general. The three “Hi-Def Features” are simple trailers of SFIV and the Street Fighter anime movie, and all three of these total less than seven minutes. Let’s break it down:
-My Scenes – Create clips and bookmarks of your favorite scenes to share on via BDLive.
-Trailers – Street Fighter IV, Street Fighter IV Teaser, and Street Fighter Anime: Three minutes, twenty seconds, and about three minutes, respectively. All of these are in HD, but frankly useless.
-Making of – A six minute SD look at the making of this film – includes interviews with the director, Van Damme, and some of the supporting cast, production footage too.
-Outtakes – Three minutes in SD of what I would just call production footage more so than outtakes.
-Deleted Scenes – Two scenes, in SD, totaling just over two minutes.
-Storyboard Sequences – Boardroom & Prison Break: A sixteen and twenty-two second drawing sequence of these two scenes.
-Video Game Sequences – I thought this was actually one of the most interesting extras on this disc. There is a thirty-two second video of Guile beating up M Bison in Super Street Fighter II set to some terribly over dramatic music, and then another of the Street Fighter: The Movie game, running forty-six seconds.
-CyberWalk – A strange two part feature; on the one hand there are about twenty stills of weird M Bison Army, well, stuff, and then the other part shows what appears to just be the first three minutes of the film.
-Archives – A somewhat interesting collection of stills including publicity photos, toys, Upper Deck trading cards, and a trailer for the arcade game of the movie.
Let’s get to the summary…