Street Fighter is in theaters on October 16.
There’s an infectious and celebratory energy coursing through Kitao Sakurai’s Street Fighter at every turn… Psycho Power, you could say. And “Psycho Power” is an apt metaphysical concept to have so front-and-center of the movie’s plot, because as Capcom’s roster of colorful and strange lowercase “c” combatants strut their stuff and pull off their special moves in hyperkinetic fashion, the movie increasingly feels disconnected from any sense of reality, even its own. Is that really a problem when you’ve got martial arts warriors and demons throwing fireballs, green monsters with Jason Momoa’s face rolling around, or Eric Andre screaming through a bullhorn at the top of his lungs? As it turns out, yes. But, as you quickly learn while watching it, Street Fighter never lets good sense get in the way of a good time.
Street Fighter gets off to a stylish start with a wonderfully executed anime prologue that sets up the divide between protagonists Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken (Noah Centineo), martial artists who’d grown to be best friends while training under their master Gouken (Don Lee). As Ryu fades into obscurity, Ken becomes a pop culture mainstay who can never quite shake the idea that his former friend was the better fighter after Ryu demonstrates an ability to harness “Hado power.” That mystical energy from the spirit realm is only able to be channeled by the greatest warriors, and Sakurai and co-writer T.J. Fixman devote about as many words in their script to explaining it as are included in this very sentence.
More necessary to the plot is how important this ability is to M. Bison (David Dastmalchian), the sadistic leader of the Shadaloo crime organization who stages a tournament of the world’s greatest fighters in hopes of sapping enough Hado power (or Psycho Power, as it’s called around Bison’s office) for him to unlock special moves of his very own. Street Fighter makes a bet that scant few in its audience are going to give two rips about how well-justified its melting pot of characters, magic abilities, and cultural influences winds up, with Sakurai seeming far more intent on representing the franchise as broadly as possible at the cost of telling a deeper story.
The fast and loose nature of the adaptation’s storytelling relies heavily on expected genre tropes for both Ryu and Ken, and that effort falls frustratingly short of how good both Andrew Koji and Noah Centineo are in their respective roles. Between the two, Centineo’s Ken gets more latitude to demonstrate how his attention-starved tenure in Ryu’s shadow has affected him, and Centineo’s restlessness gives Ken a fun “little brother” energy that feels like it goes a lot further to propping up his underdog status within the story than the actual writing of the character does. Ken’s reasons for staying locked into the tournament are never quite clear: Is he here to prove himself against Ryu? To honor his master? To save himself from more MTV Spring Break appearances? To save the world? Maybe for supporting characters, those reasons are less important. But as one of the two leads and certainly the one with more time in the spotlight, Ken’s motivation could have used a lot more focus, which would’ve allowed for his struggles later in the movie to hit home with the emotional weight the finale seems to be making space for.
Ryu’s arc has the inverse problem, with a poorly maintained throughline about his struggle with a dark power hiding just under the surface of his otherwise peaceful demeanor. He’s reluctant to engage with the tournament as a result, with that struggle embodied by Roman Reigns’ demonic Akuma, the games character which Street Fighter goes furthest out of its way to justify bringing into the fold here. As great as the Ryu/Ken anime scenes look, Sakurai flashes back to them more and more, which becomes a distracting crutch the movie uses to double back on itself and explain Akuma’s significance to Ryu and Ken’s early days.
It’s a shame, as Andrew Koji is quite compelling as Ryu and does great work keeping the character’s stoicism from drifting into feeling wooden, as often happens with action leads. With how cartoonishly emotive the other characters are, Ryu’s calm is a welcome contrast to whatever weirdo he’s paired up with in any given scene. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ryu’s intense focus is best juxtaposed against Ken’s manic enthusiasm, and Koji and Centineo are each at their best when bickering with each other. An early fight between the two in a hotel room synthesizes that dynamic best in both performance and action, as Ryu’s one-upsmanship in the duel drives Ken increasingly up a wall. That relatively straightforward fight, and the precise nature of how the camera chases the choreography to accentuate comedic beats, is a bit of an outlier for Street Fighter because the rest of the fights are textbook examples of unchecked maximalism.
Street Fighter never lets too long go by without a brawl breaking out. Whether or not those brawls have any good reason to be happening, the movie certainly kicks into a higher gear when fists are flying, even if the tournament that acts as the backbone of the movie’s second half is pretty much an afterthought. The action blends Hong Kong, anime, and ’80s/’90s movie influences that alternatingly emphasize tight fight choreography and epic hero moments. In that way, ironically, that leaves Scott Pilgrim vs. The World’s video game-inspired action as the closest cinematic relative to Street Fighter’s, a similarity that also makes its way into how the movie’s comedic bent leaves that action needing to function as an engine for both adrenaline and laughs. Sakurai opts for a scattershot approach here, with a tendency to pack action scenes so full with individual gags that often there’s not enough time to fully appreciate them before he’s moving on to the next one. The action is very well-performed by the stunt team and those in the cast like Andrew Koji who are capable of handling the more complicated sequences themselves, but the plot does leave Street Fighter relying more on VFX embellishments to that action as it goes, which add very little to how viscerally it all lands.
The movie’s wide scope does lead to a pretty strong showing from the games’ deep bench of fighters, and the flavor each of their personalities bring to this whacked-out stew are the undeniable highlight of the movie. Through its first half, Street Fighter bends over backwards to introduce game characters like Chun-Li (Callina Liang), Guile (Cody Rhodes), Vega (Orville Peck), Dhalsim (Vidyut Jammwal), and Cammy (Mel Jarnson) and to keep them in the mix as the tournament begins in MetroLao City. These characters’ personal reasons for accepting their invitations become wholly irrelevant after they’re in the door, but Street Fighter is no weaker for that. With no responsibilities to the plot, these fighters are given license to be as bizarre and funny as their individual performers can sustain, and the characters that leave a mark really leave a mark.
Andrew Schulz’s Dan Hibiki, Ken’s replacement best friend after Ryu disappears, is the big surprise on that front. As Ken’s agent, Dan begins the story looking like a money-hungry leech, but his genuine care for his buddy actually becomes one of the few emotional hooks that the movie’s got by the end, and Schulz plays being out of his depth around people who could rock his shit to frequently funny effect. Another comedian who sees big success throughout Street Fighter is Eric Andre, whose emcee Don Sauvage is essentially just a thinly veiled spin on his own signature chaos energy.
From the moment Cody Rhodes’ Guile enters (hair first, of course) to the tune of his absolutely rocking theme song, the strength of his all-American charisma and consistent ability to nail punchlines are let down only by the relatively brief amount of screentime he gets. Others — like Balrog or Zangief — are glorified cameos that at least each add a unique energy to their scenes. Jason Momoa’s Blanka certainly falls into this camp: He’s barely involved, but dang it if the freakish CGI and “Hulked on Phonics” speech pattern that define him don’t leave you leaning in with amused bewilderment by the time he rolls out of the movie. David Dastmalchian’s M. Bison is another reliable source of amusing bewilderment that Street Fighter draws on to great effect: Bison’s relationship to power and just how… gratified he becomes as he creeps closer and closer to attaining it is a surprisingly off-kilter approach to the imposing dictator, and one that Dastmalchian never blinks in the face of.
These characters really exemplify the importance of good casting, as each performer brings inherent strengths to the roles which make up a lot of ground for how underwritten many of them are. That lack of definition does backfire with the most prominent female characters: Callina Liang’s Chun-Li and Mel Jarnson’s Cammy are certainly pretty high up on the list of historically overly sexualized video game characters, a fact Street Fighter doesn’t have an intelligent enough take on to poke fun at without just perpetuating it further. But whether it’s a character rooted in strong cinematic archetypes like Guile or unfortunate ones like Chun-Li, all of the performers wholeheartedly embrace the movie’s ridiculous tone and keep it afloat when the writing lets them down. Street Fighter’s 1990s setting is supposed to be another source of campy energy for the movie, but Sakurai never quite figures out how to effectively channel that nostalgia — little of the production design feels that demonstrative of the period, leaving the way-too-frequent needle drops (including one that released on the whole other end of the decade in which the movie’s set) doing all the heavy lifting on that score.