We don't really need to go into how terrible video game movies were and how bad of a reputation they accumulated back in the late 80's and early 90's. While they weren't all the worst movies to come out, some of them very much earned this terrible reception. Street Fighter was one of those movies that brought this about, but many will tell you, it is not the worst of the bunch. It's bad, don't make any mistake on that, but it still had a campy charm that people still look upon fondly. This was in an age when video games were pulling anything and everything out of thin air in order to promote their properties. This included making movies, TV series, soundtracks and toys of all sorts.
Street Fighter was written in a very short amount of time and that shows. In this movie, there are a very select few fights that people actually want to see. There are a ton of side plots and wasted characters all over this entire film. T. Hawk does next to absolutely nothing and he looks nothing like his video game counterpart. Dee Jay is equally as useless, but at least he had some amusing lines. Fei Long is in the movie for maybe five seconds. Why were they in the film? So they could say that they were there. On top of that, the all American Guile is played by Belgian superstar, Jean-Claude Van Damme. He looks the part but really, his accent is so thick, it's hard to even know what he's saying some of the time.
There is no Street Fighter tournament. Instead, it's all about wartime hostages and America coming to help a country fight against Shadaloo, led by M. Bison. He is asking for ridiculous amounts of money or he is going to kill them. Instead, Guile leads an army to go and fight him, even though he has an army of his own and huge amounts of security surrounding his country. Then, there's Sagat trying to get in on M. Bison's plan so that he can get large amounts of money in the weapon trade. Then there's Chun Li going undercover as a news reporter to get revenge on Bison for killing her father. Then there's a sideplot Ryu and Ken are trying to go undercover to help Guile fight against Bison. Then there's Charlie getting turned into Blanca, even though it's not part of the actual lore of Street Fighter. There are so many of these little plots that go absolutely nowhere and it's just dizzying. It leaves so little room for actual, meaningful plots or combat scenes.
Now, for the good things about this movie. M. Bison's portrayal by Raul Julia is seen as a highlight. He is having so much fun with the role, even though he was sadly suffering from horrible pain thanks to his terminal cancer. This was his final role and that is a legendary way to go out. Not only is this movie terrible, but he is seen as an element that sends this movie into a cult classic masterpiece. It really shows how amazing that man was all the way to the very end. His scenes are just fun to watch because he understood the assignment the entire way through. This is especially true for the final fight with Guile. Even if he could not exert himself because of his illness, he still pulled it off and that's partly due to the director doing the best he could with the scene itself.
Balrog and E. Honda were fun because the actors obviously had good chemistry as chums. Their scenes are few but they are decent. Then Zangief is seen as another highlight, as he is just plain dumb, but he looked the part so well. He had some good lines here and there, but he is, once again, just not featured enough. Chun Li should have also been featured more, but with such a bloated cast, you get the idea, it was just too much for one movie to handle.
This movie was pretty popular for its time, but it isn't exactly looked upon fondly. This film is the text book example of a "turn your brain off and enjoy" movie. If you don't think about it and just take it scene by scene, it's actually a good time. Take it for its good parts and maybe put it on as a bit of background noise. It didn't do the video game movie genre any favors, but at least it wasn't Double Dragon. No, seriously, screw Double Dragon.
