In the year 2043, M. Bison is about to serve a hefty jail sentence but not if he can help it, he sends his best men Ken, Sagat and E. Honda back to the year 1993 to kill off the judge that originally jailed their leader. The government get wind of Bison's plans and send a crack team of officers to put a spanner in Bison's work, those officers are Vega, Guile and Dhalsim.
The three officers arrive in the past and befriend a bumbling high school student who is the butt of both the school's bullies and his sister's, Chun Li, jokes.
The three future cops begin their search for the judge before Bison's men can get their hands on him.
This movie was insane, I had heard many bad things about it so I didn't have high expectations when I out the disc in, I mean I figured it couldn't be as bad as it's made out to be.
So, basically it's Wong Jing's attempt at adapting the characters from the popular arcade classic Street Fighter II into a feature length movie, he had already played around with the characters in the Jackie Chan classic City Hunter in which Jackie and the other co-stars imitated the game in one scene.
Clearly Wong had enjoyed the experience he decided to stretch the whole thing out into a 90 minute movie.
First off I should mention when Wong began production he had "forgotten" to ask the developers of Street Fighter II if he could use the names and likenesses so what you see are names played around with i.e. E. Honda becomes Toyota and Sagat becomes Tai King and so on. Also the costumes are changed slightly but still have the look of the original characters.
The plot is a send off of Stephen Chow's Fight Back To School when the good guys disguise themselves as pupils at a high school and get into all sorts of wacky high jinks which for the most part work well on a brainless level.
The action in this one is scarce which is a shame since it is a fighting game which was the inspiration for this flick but when the action does occur it's fast and frantic, a trade mark of the action director Ching Siu-Tung's work, He styled the scenes to emulate the game play and he did it quite well, although the scene from City Hunter was a little bit better. Each of the actors display the signature moves of their respective characters.
Wong Jing's directing leaves little to be desired but the cast is pretty star filled for a Hong Kong movie, in here you've got Andy Lau, Jackie Cheung, Aaron Kwok, Simon Yam. Chingamy Yau, Dicky Cheung and Ekin Cheng.
Each actor gives a decent performance, well it is a comedy so there's not much reason to flex the acting muscles in this one.
My only problem is that the film should have given more screen time to Aaron Kwok as Ryu or as he's referred to in this Lung, he his a crazy fight with Ekin Cheng at the beginning of the movie and then you don't see him for the rest of the movie until right near the end.
Really this kind of movie could only be fully appreciated if you're viewing it with friends, preferably in a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 type of situation. I recommend you buy the movie if you can find it cheap, just try not to take it too seriously.
