Street Fighter: La Última Batalla

The late, great Raul Julia plays an insane dictator named M. Bison who rules the roost in "Shadaloo", a fictional South Asian country. Currently he's holding a bunch of hostages for a staggering 20 billion dollars, and is at work on a process of turning ordinary soldiers into inhuman fighting beasts. Fortunately, he is opposed by the dedicated heroes of the "Allied Nations", led by Colonel Guile (Jean-Claude Van Damme). Other characters caught up in the melee include hustlers Ken (Damian Chapa) & Ryu (Byron Mann), and a reporter named Chun-Li (eternally gorgeous Ming-Na Wen) who can't be taken at face value.

Big budget adaptation of the popular Capcom video game throws in everything but the kitchen sink for the sake of an entertaining show. Don't even bother attempting to watch it if you want to be intellectually stimulated or want anything resembling "high art". It's purely for action fans who want to be dazzled by spectacle (although not necessarily fans of the game). It's got plenty to keep it lively: hilariously tacky sets, an over the top nature, tons of explosions, vibrant widescreen photography, and some colourful characters. Subtle it ain't, but it is amusing, even if lacking the real wit one would expect from debuting director Steven E. de Souza, whose credits as a screenwriter include "48 Hrs." and "Commando". As you can see, de Souza gives it some semblance of a story, instead of just having one fight after another, which is what you might expect of a video game adaptation.

The international cast features some classy thespians like Julia, Simon Callow, and Roshan Seth, in addition to familiar faces like Australian songbird Kylie Minogue, Grand L. Bush of "Die Hard", Miguel A. Nunez Jr. of "The Return of the Living Dead", and Andrew Bryniarski (Leatherface in two of the more recent "Texas Chain Saw" pictures). Ordinarily it would be depressing to watch an esteemed actor like Julia in their cinematic swan song (especially since Julia clearly looks ill), but he definitely seemed determined to go out in a blaze of glory, and he makes M. Bison a wonderfully grandiose, scenery devouring bad guy. Van Damme is good, and charismatic, as usual, but he can't help but look bland in comparison. Ms. Wen is a delight.

Is this a "good" movie? This viewer is not going to go out of his way to make a case for it being one, but it's damn entertaining. Sometimes that's all that matters.

Eight out of 10.

"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!

It's really dangerous to make a movie out of a video game, especially when the characters in the video game are cartoony. STREET FIGHTER is a terrible movie. The characters are a joke, and ACT like it's all a joke. The movie looks cheesy (study Bison's "hovering" command pod - it's obviously hooked to some kind of crane), and committing the famous Street Fighter martial arts movies into live action just looks stupid. What do you expect from DeSouza when the only things he directed before were a "Tales From The Crypt" episode and some shows of "Bowling For Dollars"? (No joke) Even the few Van Damme fans that are still left (after he's made countless bombs like this) will be embarrassed for their onscreen hero.

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!

This movie suffers from the same problem as most video game or comic book adaptations in the '90s. The people making it just don't take the source material seriously so the whole thing comes across as one big garish cartoon with no attempt at characterizations or an intelligent plot. It's supposedly for teenagers and adults but it's intellectually on a level only pre-teen children can enjoy. There is some entertainment here, but only in that disreputable "so bad it's good" guilty pleasure way. Most of the actors ham it up, particularly a slumming Raul Julia in his last film. Jean-Claude Van Damme is about what you expect, only with ridiculous dyed blonde hair. I did enjoy Ming-Na Wen as Chun-Li but the rest are lame. This is also the disappointing film directorial debut of Steven E. de Souza, who had written the screenplays of some of the '80s best actioners. He also wrote this mess but unfortunately it's missing much of the wit that Die Hard, Commando, or Running Man had.