Being that I’m a huge video gamer (check out my retro gaming
vlog on YouTube, The Old Ass Retro Gamer) I never pass up watching a flick
based on one of my favorite properties. A little over a year ago I came across
a series of promo videos on YouTube advertising an independently produced Street Fighter mini-series that would be
shown on Machinima’s channel and was fully endorsed by Capcom. I immediately
became excited because not only are the Street
Fighter games some of my favorite brawlers, but it looked like it was going
to be taking a very serious approach to the material. This is a drastic
contrast to the Jean-Cleaude Van Damme cheesefest from the early 90s.
Unfortunately I completely forgot about this series until it
recently popped up on Hulu in movie form. A very, very long movie. We’re
talking 2 ½ hours long. I thought to myself “this had better be good”.
Martial artists Ryu (Mike Moh) and Ken Masters (Christian
Howard) live a traditional warrior’s life in secluded Japan learning the
ancient fighting style of “Ansatsuken” (Assassin’s Fist) from their master, Gôken
(Akira Koieyama). As their skills are honed over the years they also learn
about the tragic past that this way of life has brought upon their teacher, and
that history may repeat itself if they cannot find a way to change their
destiny.
For starters I was immensely pleased
that this miniseries decided to go simple and focus on just two of the
characters from the long running video game’s huge roster of fighters. Ken and
Ryu have always been the main stars of the series and I was happy that they were
front and center, especially after how they were mistreated in the
aforementioned Van Damme cinematic abortion. I was also happy that there was
some nice drama, character moments and pleasant throwbacks to the source
material. There was also a clever bit about Gôken buying Ken and Ryu a copy of Mega Man 2 to play on their Nintendo to
relax while not training.
However, this miniseries is basically
one overlong, drawn out and pretty damned boring take on the material. It took
me two days to make it through the whole film because I kept falling asleep.
There’s no real plot to the games so the writers had to come up with something that
not only would be worth watching for the fans, but would also appeal to those
not familiar with the material. This double-edged sword rarely works and in
this case I’m pretty sad to say that it failed on both sides. As a fan I’m
torn…
Here’s what I liked about the film:
-
The actors really commit to their parts.
Not only do they look like their respective characters, but they do all their
own fighting as well.
-
The remote locations featured within
are breathtakingly beautiful and some remind me of the arenas from the games.
-
The game is accurately represented for
the first time and the script stays true to what the spirit of the games felt
like.
-
The fight scenes are short, but well
choreographed and exciting.
-
Seeing Ken and Ryu’s special moves,
like the Hadoken and Shoryuken attacks, performed with some outstanding special
effects and stunt work put a smile on my face.
-
The origin of Akuma was kind of rad.
-
There are plenty of throwbacks to the
source material, from musical cues to lines of dialogue.
-
Seeing Ken and Ryu developing their
special attacks was cool as hell.
-
The cinematography, special effects and
costumes are tops for a low budget internet miniseries.
Here’s what I didn’t like about the
film:
-
The acting is a mixed bag. The two
leads, Mike Moh and Christian Howard, turn in decent and likable performances
as Ryu and Ken respectively. Akira Koieyama is fantastic as Gôken. But the rest
of the cast, especially Joey Ansah as Akuma is a total blight on this flick.
He’s downright horrible and reminded me of the acting seen in Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.
-
The plot is so drawn out that it is
tiresome in the extreme. There’s only so many times that you can see someone
wandering the countryside in silence while contemplating their destiny before
it loses its meaning and becomes frustratingly annoying.
-
The flashback structure works at the
beginning, but it too loses its focus and in the end becomes a series of
redundant scenes that serve no purpose but to pad the runtime.
-
The subplot about old man Gôtetsu (Togo
Igawa) is lame and predictable.
-
The writing, while very fanboyish,
meanders and doesn’t really have a point to make until the final 30 minutes or
so. It is very one note.
-
While I like the idea of the film being
a prequel to the games, it would have been nice to have a character or two from
the series make an appearance instead of being about just Ken and Ryu. Plenty
of other characters from the games trained with Gôken too, so why couldn’t they
have popped up in the script to liven things up?
-
The film ends with a cliffhanger that
could have easily been resolved within this film’s runtime if some of the
pointless filler was excised and the narrative sped up to a tolerable level.
-
The make-up for Akuma is dreadful.
Borderline racist. The character starts off as Gôki, played by Asian actor Gaku
Space, and when he becomes Akuma the role is taken over by African actor Joey
Ansah who is given faux-Asian features and a really bad wig. It’s insulting.
I liked aspects of this film and found
the rest to be a waste of time. Sure there’s lots of fanboy love flowing freely
throughout the entire production, but it felt more like a high budgeted fan
film than an actual film. I understand that the direction of the script was
most likely due to budget constraints, but why bother making a Street Fighter film if there’s hardly
any “fighting”? It kind of defeats the purpose.
If you’re a fan of the video games I
recommend you check it out just on general principal. Everyone else should just
stay away and play Street Fighter IV
on their iPhone or watch the superior Mortal
Kombat: Legacy.
