Street Fighter II: Le film

Well, I must say I LIKED THIS FILM!!! The drawings were great (manga, what else?), and combined with the magic touch of manga artists for dramatic scenes and action, this is a PIECE OF FINE ART. A lot is being revealed and we are finally aware to a little of the characters' background (if you want more try Street Fighter Zero or Alpha, which is the same movie...). This movie should be replaced with that dumb variations that had been made before (with all doe respect to Mr. Van Dam, Ryu still kicks his ass).

I would very recommend watching Street Fighter Zero after this.

I haven't played a Street Fighter game in twenty years, so I didn't approach "The Animated Movie" expecting spot-on character treatments, backstories, etc. The story on this thing's fairly nonsensical, everyone's either a mercenary or government op. But it does benefit from great production values; this looks damn good. And no one comes to this expecting anything deep, I mean it's full of 'roided out physiques squaring off against each other. It's whether or not the movie delivers on the fight scenes, which are top-notch (especially the tense Vega/Chun Li face-off). I imagine that, were I a more devoted fan of the games, I would've given a rip about the story. But again, fights and quality animation are the focus. My only gripe with the U.S. version are the songs, none of which fit (Korn, seriously?).

Scratch that, I've got one more gripe. Internet lore tells of an extended Chun Li shower scene, the juicy parts of which were missing here. Manga Entertainment apparently forgot that "sex and violence" is a package deal. You put that T&A back where it belongs! Are we really pretending teens aren't this movie's target audience?

6/10

Now this is what the live action street fighter should have looked like. At least in this movie the characters stories are right (most of them). The fight scenes in this movie are really good. Especially the bloody fight between Vega and Chun-Li, for the most part of that Chun-Li is dodging Vega's claw as KMFDM is playing in the background. The soundtrack was changed for the dubbed version, adding bands songs that we know or don't know so well for a few scenes but leaving most of the film score the same during most fight scenes. The songs actually fit with what's going on. The only one that I think was playing in a fight scene was Ultra, and that went really good matching the fast paced action that was happening on screen. The only thing that bugs me a bit is that part of the shower scene was cut. It was a scene that showed Chun-Li's breasts for about 5 seconds. It's not the fact that the nudity was cut out that bugs me it's the fact that I don't like it when I movie gets cut and I find out about it knowing that if I was in another country it could see it. The movie was great overall and anyone who wants to see a good Martial arts film should see it.

My review 8.

If movie justice existed, this movie would've been in theatres instead of that disastrous movie version. It has action, drama, even a bit of humour. Although I could only see the dubbed version, it was still excellent. The main characters are portrayed well, much better than your typical action flick. The only (possibly) sorry part is how some characters are given bit parts just so they could be there, this does nothing to detract from the movie. I enjoyed every minute of it. Let's hope movies like these encourage more people to check out anime. The only reason someone might not like it would be because their favourite character wasn't given enough screentime!

When I first bought this film, I bought it for two reasons: it's based on the popular video game (of which I play often) and I wanted to start off my own collection of anime films. I probably would have trashed it right away because the live-action film version of the video game wasn't that great, but after watching my newly bought anime, I actually enjoyed it. The people who made SF2TAM managed to keep the movie faithful to the video game it was based upon and managed to fit every character into it in one shape or another. The characters themselves are portrayed the way they should be and the fights were well drawn. Worth watching if you're a fan of the series and even if you're not, do watch this film. It's a good movie on its own right.