Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li

Plot synopsis:
The movie opens with Chun Li narrating her experience growing up aspiring to be a concert pianist. As a child, she moves from San Francisco to Hong Kong with her family. There, along with piano, she learns Wushu from her father, Xiang, who is a well connected businessman. One night, her home is attacked by Bison and his henchman. Chun Li's father fights them off until Balrog grabs a hold of a young Chun Li, forcing him to surrender. As Bison and his men are leaving with Xiang, Chun Li's mother tries to stop them. Balrog just punches her.Years later, Chun Li grows up and becomes a talented concert pianist. At the end of one of her concerts, she receives a scroll written in Ancient Chinese text. On her way home, she sees a mysterious homeless man getting assaulted by street thugs. After the thugs leave, Chun Li tends to him and notices a spiderweb tattoo on his hand. Meanwhile, Xiang is shown working for Bison as a prisoner. In return for his services, he is allowed to view pictures of his daughter all grown up. Back home, Chun Li's mother finally loses her battle to cancer as Chun Li and her servants mourn her loss at a funeralElsewhere, we see Nash and Maya investigating a murder of several heads of criminal syndicate families in Bangkok. Chun Li on the side is meeting with a wise old lady in town who studies the scroll and tells her to find a man named Gen in Bangkok, revealing to her an image of the same spiderweb she saw tattooed on the homeless man's hand. With a new goal in mind, Chun Li leaves her home and heads to Bangkok. After weeks of searching for Gen without any luck, she sees a man being assaulted in an alley by thugs. Chun Li comes to his rescue and fights them. After a long battle ended by finishing them with a Bike Rack Drop Ultra move, Chun Li collapses in exhaustion. There, we see Gen pick her up to take her to his home.Gen tells Chun Li that he knows how to find her father and that Bison has him, but that she also needs anger management. In response, she goes to an internet cafe and logs onto shoryuken.com to find out more about Bison, who is now holding the families of property owners hostage in order to force them to sign their property over to him. Upon leaving, one of the owners is asked to hand over the rights to a docking harbor, allowing the shipment of the "White Rose". Chun Li overhears this. Meanwhile at Interpol, Nash figures out that Bison's headquarters are right across the street from the Police Station.Later that night, Cantana, one of Bison's secretaries, goes to a nightclub. Chun Li spies on her and notices her jocking the girls in the club. Chun Li moves in and seductively dances with her before casually walking away into the bathroom. Cantana, sex driven, follows her and locks the bathroom window. There, Chun Li beats her into giving out the location of the White Rose. Cantana's bodyguards come back and Chun Li escapes after a brief shootout.We are then told of Bison's origins. He is the son of Irish missionaries. He grew up an orphan having to steal fish from people in Thailand. In order to lose his conscience, he forced his daughter out of the womb of his wife prematurely. This somehow transferred his conscience into her. Back at Gen's home, Bison's henchmen come after Gen and Chun Li. Gen fights them off until Balrog blows up his house with a rocket launcher. With Gen gone and nowhere to be found, Chun Li runs off. She is then attacked by Vega, who she defeats soundly and hangs upside down since his claws weren't sharp enough to cut rope.Chun Li then heads to the harbor and interrogates an employee into telling her the arrival time of the White Rose. Later that night, this turns out to be a trap as several Shadaloo soldiers capture her. Chun Li is then taken back to Shadaloo headquarters and is reunited with her father. Bison tells her that Xiang outlived his usefulness and breaks his neck, killing him. Bison and Balrog leave Chun Li to the henchman to finish off. Chun Li however escapes when they try to swing her around from the ceiling like a pinata. As she runs away, she is shot in the arm by Balrog. Before Balrog could recapture her, the crowd begins throwing durians at him. This scares Balrog as he drives off in his Benz. Chun Li meanwhile, is rescued again by Gen, who survived the explosion.Chun Li approaches Nash and tells him she needs backup to take down Bison. Nash and Maya oblige as Chun Li approaches the dock employee who set her up last time. The employee tells her that he was forced into deceiving her and tells her the real arrival time. Chun Li doubts him at first, but he points to the white board at the arrival time, proving that it is true. At the dock later that night, Interpol agents engage in a shootout with Shadaloo soldiers. On a ship, Chun Li finds a girl asking where her father is. Meanwhile, Gen fights Balrog and kills him by stabbing him with a pipe spraying nitrogen. We later find out that the girl is Bison's daughter and her name is Rose, making her the White Rose. Bison takes her in and welcomes her warmly.Bison walks into his office where he is ambushed by Gen. Gen however is no match for him. Sensing his daughter in danger, Bison goes back to his daughters room, where he finds she is gone. Gen shows up again and ambushes Bison, getting beaten up again. Chun Li then comes in and fights Bison. After a long battle, she hits him with a bamboo pole a couple times and drops some sandbags on him, making him dizzy. She then charges up a Kikoken and shoots it at him, knocking him off the scaffolding they were fighting on, then jumping on his neck and twisting it, killing him.Back home, Chun Li is settled down as Gen pays her a visit. He shows her an ad for a Street Fighter tournament, telling her about a Japanese fighter named "Ryu something". Chun Li declines, saying that she's home for now.

Tags: murder, violence, flashback, good versus evil, action, revenge

Review:
Horrible, almost nonexistent plot, bad acting, and terrible fight scenes make this movie not worth the time it takes to watch it.
If you think my heading is cheesy and stupid you're absolutely right and I heartily agree...unfortunately that vary statement is the crux of the latest Street Fighter attempt's plot.Ignoring the 1994 Van Damme version of the franchise this film starts anew, focusing on the character of Chun Li, a young Asian woman highly skilled in both piano and martial arts.
The director ALWAYS misses the point of what the movie should be about; I mean fair enough you don't want a movie about Ryu fighting Ken or Bison, and want a Legend of Chun Li, But you could've put a better story in it, or give the movie better actors (I can't believe the acting in this movie).
Take Marvel for example, their world interacts a lot of different marvel characters, but when it comes to their own movie/cartoon, they actually make the story relevant to the characters life(e.g just because Bison was the boss, it doesn't mean that Chun Li's life has to be revolved around killing him (which is what Ryu does)).The choice of camera shots used to try and show the story was also done badly.
I would highly recommend better actors and directors AND story writers if another street fighter movie comes out.P.S Didn't finish the movie, it was that bad..
On a scale, the strongest scenes are easily those between Kristin Kreuk and Robin Shou as Chun Li and Gen, and sadly the weakest being Michael Clark Duncan and Chris Klein's characters of Balrog and Nash.That was the central problem for me here, there is an exciting action piece at work but is jumbled with various other plot lines and set pieces that really feel out of place.
The first Street Fighter movie (1994) at least made me smile once here and there with it's "camp" -attitude, Legend of Chun-Li tries too hard to be a seriously taken "growing-up" drama that the fail is twice as bad that it could've been.
I guess another comparison that crossed my mind was Lara Croft.Kristin Kreuk won a great part when she got the role of Chun Li. Being a fair-weather fan of Smallville, I had long hoped she would find a fitting character in the movies.
He also did not seem to know that, while this is a movie about a fictitious crime/street fighter, you don't have to litter this kind of movie with weak and poorly played characters like Charlie Nash and Detective Maya Sunee.
Enough nods to the game without trying to be the game, real enough without loosing it's fantasy edge.Sure it's easy to hate, but lets face it, the reason the Van Damme movie was so bad was because it tried to emulate the game too much, this movie does not make that mistake.Fight scenes are excellently done and well choreographed, plot is smooth without being too daft or serious.If you are expecting a video game or to see "Lana Lang" expect to be disappointed.
We now have Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li, a story about the First Lady of Fighting Games herself.
So it's nice to see her finally in the spotlight, portrayed by an actress who actually bothers to put some effort into her performance: Kristin Kreuk.The previous Street Fighter film pretty much failed to give its characters any good development or reason to show any real emotions, making it rather hard to connect with them.
They not only had to please Street Fighter and Chun Li fans around the world, but somehow try to make a good movie in the process.
i think this movie deserves good reviews because it wasn't bad as those other game based films like DB:evolution that sucked big time!
(well that worked for the x-men films, wolverine, yellow spandex anyone,and didn't work in the slightestfor the Van Damme version of street fighter, yeah the costumes were true to the game but in real life they are so very wrong) The costumes in the game are slightly ridiculous so to make any attempt of making this a serious film they had to change that.Bison is wearing a suit, and has a beard (yes cos most druglords wear military outfit despite not actually being in the military, I see why people would care about that???) Some bad wire work, but lets be honest no worse than in a lot of Chinese films and how else were they gonna recreate moves from the game which are ridiculously over the top in the first place.
As for the rest of the action their were some pretty damn good strikes and locks as well really impressive flips, rolls and break falling especially when you consider the main character is from smallville, I was really surprised.Im surprised at how seriously people criticised this film as well as overacting, I have seen so much worse and at least someone is making street fighter movies.
Seriously, I rather watch the first live-action streetfighter just because some of the cast actually looked like the role they played.*(Zangief, Sagat, Bison, Blanka ..a bit, etc) In this movie, NO ONE LOOKED ANYTHING LIKE WHO THEY WERE SUPPOSE TO BE!!
Michael Clarke Duncan, Chris Klein and Neal McDonough also Great in they characters, i would like to see Michael Clarke Duncan a little more in the movie, doing some more fight scenes but whatever..
Wonderful music, good action scenes, decent story plot as much as you can based on the video game, and hot eye candy Kristin in it too.
If you pay attention you realize that in some ways she kinda looks like Chun-Li. Now I had read a review on IMDb saying "Kristen Kreuk managed to turn in the least sexy fighting heroine ever." But you see, I am glad they didn't try to make it all about how sexy Chun-Li is, but more about her and how she became such a great fighter.
I just came back from watching "Street Fighter: Legend of Chun Li" at the cinema and the movie is better than my expectation!
This movie has incredible martial arts, a beautiful heroine, lots of action, cool quotes, an epic infiltration scene, parcour (freerunning), a wise master, you see the use of "CHI" (chinese life energy) and you get an incredible show of Wushu.And yes, of course it might not fit your expectations if you want to see the best movie of your life, but ey, it's really really good entertainment.Hey, I normally share the opinion when the vast majority of reviewers say "BAD".
Some take the comical route as did "Double Dragon", which went well in my eyes when I saw it as an early teenager - I would find a lot more to bash about it today, some were written with monkeys with down syndrome; Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, case in point, and others veered from the original idea to form their own story; Resident Evil.The original "Street Fighter" was terrible; now comes "legend of Chun Li".
Vega only has a handful of scenes, Balorg is merely the Hench man without much dialog to screw up, and the only other character besides Bison is Chun Li herself (obviously) and Gen (acting as mentor).I laughed at some of the attacks, like Chun Li's spin-kick, but moments like that were too far between for me to seriously point out as down grading the movie.
But the real show-stealer here is Neal McDonough, who looks like he's having a blast playing the main villain, Bison, a role that tarnished the great Raul Julia's career (sadly it was his last cinematic performance) in the first movie.What makes the film give credibility is the lively and kinetic direction from director Andrzej Bartkowiak.
Being a film lover, and even being able to enjoy watching even a good B movie, I rate this as a better than average game conversion movie.It has a nice budget, plenty of action, a story than generally makes sense, some fairly well known faces and even starts off fairly promising.The main rub is that it tries to make the film appear almost every-day believable, which just doesn't work with it also trying to be a totally fictional game conversion where there are special powers all over the place.Toning down certain abilities, and omitting characters from the game will always upset hardcore gaming fans, which is a shame as the film really isn't all that bad.My biggest bug-bear is the directing.
No doubt actual Street fighter fans everywhere (including myself) will be out for blood after seeing this cinematic atrocity!I can't be bothered wasting my breath about this "film" but I'll just say the special effects were certainly special but more in a South Park 'Timmy' kind of way, the fight scene's were even worse and the acting and plot were non-existent!
Lame!!!If you thought the Van Damme Street Fighter film was bad then you're in for a major surprise with this one!!!Honestly, the whole thing plays out like a bad made for TV movie and is just horrible.
Bison and Barog, years later Chun LI is all grown up and sets out on a journey to bangkok to find a warrior named Gen who will show her a way to defeat Bison and get her father back.This game to film adaptation is directed Andrej Bartowiak, whose credits includes more superior fare such as ROMEO MUST DIE, EXIT WOUNDS, CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE and the game to film adaptation of DOOM, although this film is not the director's best work but it is far from being the worst movie ever made, this adaptation is mostly reinvented, the characters are portrayed differently such as Vega who in the game wears a mask to protect his looks, in this film he wears a mask to hide his identity, none of the things that were attempted in this film were meant as bad intentions, it was a case of the filmmakers maybe wanting to give STREET FIGHTER fans something different, only it wasn't very well received.The acting isn't all bad but not all good, seeing Chris Klein as Nash who is a cocky police detective, you kind of figure someone needed to tell him that he didn't need to make it so obvious that he was acting lame, Robin Shou who plays Gen is not a bad actor but here he's a bit wooden as if he didn't have much to work with, the rest of the cast did all right, but Chris Klein doesn't fit in with his role.On the Positive side there are a few good fight scenes and a strong female lead, its truly not the best action film you'll find but at least it won't join the same list as the game to film disasters of Uwe Boll..
I'm still playing with Chun Li and Cammy on Street Fighter X Tekken.We - who know and play the game - expecting that the movie suppose to look like the game.
Other than that he really was like an assassin.Some people said only Chun Li, Bison, Vega, Balrog are from the game but there was also Gen. The only thing that other reviewers I agreed about was the overdone cop scenes and characters.Fighting scenes were very good except the Kikouken.
But if you are a fan of the game and have regular friends who has no idea what Street Fighter is (like me) - when you go together to this movie you never need to explain anything because it's down-to-earth and finely told story.I watched it many times, tonight just watched it once again just to write this.
I really liked street fighter: the legend of Chun-Li. It was better than i thought it would be and it had a lot of action.
On the whole, Kristin Kreuk along with the rest of the cast, come across like B rate actors, Michael Clarke Duncan being the exception, as he has a level of screen presence's A listers bring.Fans of the Arcade game probably won't relate to The Ledged of Chun-Li. Fans of Kung-Fu probably won't relate to The Ledged of Chun-Li. There's still room, lots of room, for a better movie based on Capcom's Street Fighter..
I thought it couldn't get much worse than Rollerball and Say It Isn't So, but in Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, Klein goes the extra mile, putting in a turn (as tough cop Nash) that is inexplicably bad in every way, each line delivered in a raspy macho manner whether it suits or not, and with a range of bizarre facial expressions that are hard not to find funny.To be fair, it must be said that it's not all Klein's fault that The Legend of Chun-Li is as terrible as it is—almost everyone in this clunker is dreadful, from Kristin Kreuk as the titular heroine, who never once convinces that she is capable of unleashing major whoop-ass, to Michael Clarke Duncan as musclebound henchman Balrog, who hams it up a treat, to Neal McDonough as head villain Bison, who gives Duncan a run for his money in the overacting stakes.
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.
Chun-Li fights exactly the way it was shown, some of the street fighter characters were there and most importantly they at least stick to the general plot of the game.
While Doom is no cinematic masterpiece, I consider it the best video game to film adaptation ever.Even saying that though, the film still isn't all that great.But Street Fighter Legend of Chun-Li is really awful.Direction is badly done.
I'm no director and Andrzej Bartkowiak clearly has more talent that I do, but really, even the average movie watcher will spot z-grade direction.The film contains some Street Fighter characters, but the plot is made out of thin air, not from the games.The film is also terribly cast.
i don't know What Chris Klein was doing here.i do know his acing was razzie worthy.come to think about it,his character was pretty pointless.Neil McDonough didn't really belong in the movie either.and Michael Clarke Duncan played the same role he always plays.Kristen Kruek is no doubt a talented actress,but i wonder if she read the script(if there was one)or if any body did.the only person who seemed to be decent was Moon Bloodgood and she was in an entirely different movie.for me,Street Fighter:The Legend Of Chun-Li is a 3/10.
I have never been a fan of the fight videogames.Sure, I played the most famous games from the genre (Mortal Kombat, Virtua Fighter, One Must Fall and various iterations of Street Fighter), but I did not find these game strategies to be satisfactory: 1)frantically pressing buttons with the hope of achieving combinations which let us win the fight; and 2)spending long hours on the slow test and mistake process in order to learn those combinations.However, I understand the attractive those videogames has on so many people, because in some way, they simulate the fights we have seen on several martial-arts movies.So, I guess there is an ironic element when the roles are reversed, and a video game inspires a movie.The most recent example of that is the film Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, and the result is truly horrible.Like it happened on the recent Dragonball: Evolution, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li exploits the name of a popular franchise for bringing us a pathetic martial-arts movie.This film does not take advantage of its exotic location (Bangkok); it has a disastrous, stupid and deeply tedious screenplay; and the fights are very poorly filmed.On the leading role, Kristen Kreuk makes a good effort, but the material is so poor that she cannot do anything with her role.And I liked to see the Asian superstar Robin Shou on this movie, because I was so terribly bored with it that I started to remember some competent martial-arts movies he participated on (like DOA: Dead or Alive and Mortal Kombat, which were also based on videogames).Speaking of videogames, director Andrzej Bartkowiak's previous film was Doom, and even that piece of crap was better than Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.The deep incompetence from this film made me to remember with a bit of nostalgia the previous version of Street Fighter, which starred Jean Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia (1940-1994) 15 years ago.That film had been ridiculous but very entertaining, and the horrible quality of its successor made me to have a bit more respect for it.So, of course that my suggestion is to stay very far away from Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. If you wanna see an excellent martial-arts movie, I highly recommend you Kung Fu Hustle, Fearless (2006) and Hero..
Despite being called "Street Fighter", the fights here are nothing too fantastic or memorable, and looks comfortably in place with many B-grade action movies out there, with the occasional lapsing into the crutch of having the fight scenes edited in double quick time.I suppose the filmmakers had tried their best, but there's a lot of room to try harder and come up with a better product.
The kung-fu action itself wasn't as bad as the film, although many elements didn't quite work, and there were enough 'cheesy' moments to detract from what could have been o.k. scenes.The plot seemed non-existent, with clear 'holes' in the script, and as plenty of mistakes in the film (the fact Chun-Li seemed to be able to converse in Mandarin to Thai people (perhaps that was just what I derived?) was just one of them).Added to the poor acting, in which I highlight Chris Klein's attempt at being a tough, streetwise Fed (perhaps sticking to soppy love stricken characters is a good idea for the guy), the film left a lot wanting..
Since this is a movie based on a character based from a fighting game you at least would expect some good action.
Street Fighter: the Legend of Chun-Li is perhaps the worst movie ever to be put on celluloid.