Streetfighter - Die entscheidende Schlacht

I first saw "Street Fighter" in theaters with my older brother and a few of his friends, and, as a four year old, I was upset by the lack of hadokens, yoga fires, hundred hand slaps, and sonic booms. Now older and (slightly) more mature, I can point out some of these movie's flaws accurately. First off, the campy style, as funny as it may be, takes away from the gritty and dark attitude that video game of Street Fighter II conveyed. Too many one liners, and predictable reactions are present. POSSIBLE SPOILER ---When Bison tells orders Chun-Li be taken into his personal quarters, E Honda and Balrog struggle harder in the same cliché way most heroes do when a villain is taking a female member of the team---- Some of the choices for actors were also under par, like Van Damme being Guile. I understand he's a kick@$$ action hero, but the guy is not all American, which is what Guile was all about. The portrayal of Sagat was disappointing; he's supposed to be a terrifying 7 foot tall menace, not some weak looking failed businessman. Removing Fei Long altogether was understandable, but Blanka should've been more prominent, rather than some odd rehash of Charlie and the Brazillian beast. Making Dhalsim a doctor, with NO powers at all, does not do justice to the real Dhalsim. I liked this doctor, but I want to see Dhalsim! Some of the characters were okay though; Dee Jay made a surprisingly good villain, Bison was well chosen, and Zangief was hilarious, but that's about as good as it gets. This movie also lacked any special moves at all, I mean understand they were on a low budget, and it was nearly 12 years ago, but come on, you can have a corny movie with cool colors, a cool movie with no colors, but you can't have a corny movie with no colors and expect people to love it (colors means ha-do-kens by the way). The only move they tried to portray was Bison's psycho crusher, and that kind of failed. Although the game was amazing, this movie should only be watched if you're not expecting the glory of the game, and can take this crap lightly. I feel like a teacher who has failed a student...

I can't believe all the negative comments I've been reading here about this movie. Really, people, what were you expecting from a Van Damme movie? Citizen Kane? Yes it's silly, Van Damme's acting is atrocious and Raul Julia looks very ill (and is miscast) in his last theatrical film. Still, the movie is not overly violent (hence the PG-13 rating), the script and the actors never take things seriously for one moment, everybody (except for Julia and Van Damme) give out good performances and some of the jokes are actually pretty funny. Also there's a STRONG gay subtext between the Asian and American "friends". Maybe I'm seeing something that's not there, but the looks those two exchange at times... It's loud, it's VERY fast-paced...it's a HUGE amount of fun! It's not classic cinema...heck, it's not even good cinema, just fun! Turn off your brain and enjoy!

Street Fighter is a strange video game movie. The game is an amazing 2D fighter with a wide array of characters from different continents who battle it out for...something.

The Movie, surprisingly, has more plot than you would think. M. Bison (Raul Julia, in his final performance) is now portrayed as a megalomanical super villain who has dreams of causing collapse to the entire world, such as killing a large number of hostages unless paid a ransom worthy of Dr. Evil standards, creating a breed of super soldiers and kidnapping the Queen of England and create his own world based off of his image. Trust me, it is as silly as it sounds.

Lt. Guile (Jean Claude Van Damme) approaches the situation in that he has to save the hostages and hopefully put Bison on ice, once and for all, thus stopping his plans for world domination.

From there on in, the movie is basically an almost two hour fan service with various subplots with almost all the characters from the Street Fighter universe. Zangief and Dee Jay work for M. Bison as Muscle and Computer Technician, respectively. Chun-Li, Balrog and E. Honda are all out for get revenge and Ken and Ryu are professional fighters hoping to score a battle against the vain Vega and evil Sagat.

Like I said, the rest of the movie is nothing short of fan service, since all the actors deliver some truly awful one liners aside, Van Damme's Guile almost sounds like Tommy Wiseau ("The Room") when you close your eyes, and the whole plot itself is actually quite boring.

Well, why in the world would someone defend this movie then? I'll give you three reasons, two are part of the movie, and one is a personal thing.

1. Raul Julia's M. Bison. A villain who looks rather powerful should be given a great performance. While Raul Julia did die after this movie was over, there is no denying that he went out with a bang rather than whimper. His performance is laughably over the top, but at no point do you look at his face and see a man who seems to think he's in a movie, and as a result, he makes the movie quite amazing. If anything, he gives us a theatrical villain which, for his character, works very well.

2. There was a lot of room for potential here. Let's be honest, writing a movie is easy, but writing a good movie is hard. The director (Who is also the writer) took a fighting video game and crafted a movie out of it, and a fairly well done one at that. Sure, not in execution, but in originality, it works.

3. It was a movie from my childhood. I was a child of the 90's, and as such, I can remember my parents letting me watch this at a very young age, and it was awesome. Damn the Nostalgia factor, but it's what makes this movie really good. I can remember how intimidated I was in the final battle scenes, and how cool M. Bison was to me (in that over the top Saturday Morning Cartoon style of cool).

This movie is a very easy one to attack for just not being good, but understand from my point of view, even knowing how bad it is, having no character development, some truly cheesy one liners and awful performances, including Van Damme giving a performance that makes him sound like Tommy Wiseau if he smoked cigarettes for ten years and you closed your eyes real tight, I still like it.

It's cheesy, terrible and ridiculous, but all you need to know is that Raul Julia delivers some of the best lines for years to come, and you know you are dealing with a kind of cult classic when one of the film's greatest lines is, "This is merely superconductor electromagnetism. Surely, you've heard of it." In other words, go see this movie if you haven't already.

7/10.

Some people claim this is a bad movie... true. Some people claim this movie is a bad translation of the video game it's supposed to be based on... true. Some people claim it's the worst ever... trust me, I've seen worse.

While it does have its Christmas list of bad things (poor script, ugly sets, subpar acting), it's good for a laugh or two because of the negatives... at the same time however, any dedicated fan of the Street Fighter games will find this as an insult because it does not properly adapt the video game...

Is it a bad movie? Sure it is... but I've seen my share of bad movies and I can tell that this isn't the absolute worst!

"There can be only one".....film that is, which is worse than all others and THIS is it folks!

A movie for adolescent pea-brains. Not a solitary video-game has transferred to the big screen with even a modicum of success. Is money THAT available to make movies, that such an embarrassment as this could reach the point of actual RELEASE? Maybe no video distributor would touch it and they had no choice?

By far Van Dumb's worst flick. Playing Colonel William Guile, he leads his commandos against the seriously insane General Bison, dictator and megalomaniac of the fictitious Shadaloo. Filmed on the cheap, up on Australia's Gold Coast amidst the worst plasticised sets you ever saw. Phony explosions fill the sky, make-up is at the level of Grade 2 face-painting and a script to match. The acting beggars belief, Kylie Minogue's just about topping the list! This is seriously heavy-duty garbage! Much was made of the "singing budgie's" martial arts training for the film. From memory, she gets to perform a total of three high kicks which would be unlikely to cause distress to an elderly pensioner.

As for Raul Julia as General Bison? It was to be his last screen role, completed just before his death (maybe he saw the rushes?) It is a sad epitaph he would never have wished for. No-one comes out of this mess looking good, not even the paying audience - ESPECIALLY them! In hindsight, the very last scene sums up the cringe-factor..watch it!