Misused ensemble, underconfident script keep Street Fighter game adaptation from landing its blows clean

Adaptations of fighting games come built-in with a major problem: how does one tell a coherent story about a game with no true protagonist?

Sadly, Street Fighter doesn’t know.

When it debuted in 1991, Street Fighter II (upon which most of this film is based) featured 12 “world warriors,” eight of them playable and with their own motives.

Managing such a cast requires a script capable of efficiently introducing them and then giving everyone decent reasons to interact — or homing in on a few and letting the rest be set dressing. Director Kitao Sakurai opts for the latter, focusing on Japanese warrior Ryu (Andrew Koji), American Ken Masters (Noah Centineo) and Interpol agent Chun Li (Callina Liang).

Students of an obscure form of karate, mastery of which results in access to a sacred “hado” power, Ryu and Ken have a fire-and-ice friendship. Ryu is stoic and controlled (though with a nice deadpan humour) whereas scion-of-privilege Ken is a boisterous playboy who found real meaning in his training.

A few acts of bloody violence leading to their master’s death drove Ryu into hiding and Ken into full-time impostor syndrome, burying himself in brand deals while agonizing over his (mostly imagined) second-best status.

Flashbacks come via fantastic animated sequences, depicting Ryu’s moment of glory six years before the film’s 1993 setting, winning the World Warrior Tournament. The win comes only after he briefly succumbs to the “evil intent” which tempts wielders of the hado.

The avatar of that temptation is their master’s brother Akuma (Joe Anoa’i, a.k.a. Roman Reigns), who seeks to awaken it in Ryu. But someone other than Akuma has their sights set on him: criminal overlord Bison (David Dastmalchian, wormy and sadistic) watched Ryu’s victory as well and wants to take the hado for himself.

Sadly, two major villains is too many for this film, and it struggles to juggle them.

Bison stages a tournament to lure Ryu out of hiding. Chun Li, undercover in Bison’s HQ, recruits Ken — who’s eager to prove his mettle — hoping his presence will force Ryu to show up. Chun Li is out to prove Bison’s power-siphoning tech is real and is determined to take him down as revenge for her father’s murder. Liang looks and fights the part, but it’s a shame the script treats Chun Li, an important character in SF history (she was the first woman one could play as in a fighter), as a bit unhinged and creeped on by nearly everyone.

Akuma’s vow to kill whoever wins this new tourney spurs Ryu to action in order to protect Ken. The estranged pair’s reunion doesn’t go smoothly.

The rest of the roster gets bit-part treatment. We meet U.S. Air Force operative Guile (Cody Rhodes, hamming it up), Soviet grappler Zangief (Olivier Richters, perfectly cast and underused), Indian warrior Dhalsim (Vidyut Jammwal, a delight), sumo E. Honda (Hirooki Goto), Spanish masked fiend Vega (country singer Orville Peck, because why not?), boxer Balrog (rapper 50 Cent, among the best of these) and green-skinned beastman Blanka (Jason Momoa, CGI’d to high heaven). And that’s not all.

It’s a lot to manage, which brings us to a major problem: a baffling overuse of comic-relief actors. Chief among these is Andrew Schulz as Dan Hibiki, Ken’s manager. Nothing would be lost if his part were cut, yet he is constantly at the centre of the action, sucking the tension out of anything halfway serious with self-aware quips. It’s the same with tournament announcer Don Sauvage (Eric André), who would have been fine fun as a cameo but gets much more, to the film’s detriment.

It’s all wasted time this movie desperately needed to properly use its ensemble and tie up its threads, instead of leaving viewers with a massive loose end and a gesture to a sequel we may never get.

Thankfully the fights are pretty solid. If Street Fighter does one thing consistently right, it’s make these characters’ bizarre signature techniques look good. Exaggerated physical feats — E. Honda’s hundred-hand slap, Dhalsim’s elastic limbs — have a nicely cartoonish feel reminiscent of Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle.

Making a good Street Fighter hinges on accepting the franchise’s inherent silliness and telling its story straight anyway. The key word is “accepting.” Sakurai and his team lean into the strange costumes, super-moves and anime haircuts, but they insist on turning everything else in the movie into a joke, too. Its soundtrack is not just corny but at times anachronistic.

To their credit, Koji and Centineo do well telling a story of two young men chasing a lofty goal while nursing fears and insecurities they never share with each other, allowing them to fall to their respective darknesses. By the end, both men have learned something about how to express their strengths without repressing themselves.

It’s a shame the movie around them couldn’t do the same.

darren.ridgley@freepress.com

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