Street Fighter II: Le film

Viewed on: Amazon Prime Video.

Adaptation of the popular fighting game franchise of the same name, it follows a wandering warrior known as Ryu (the "face" of the franchise) as he's hunted down by the villainous M. Bison (series long villain & usual endboss in the games, here he heads off a terrorist organization known as Shadaloo that is capturing powerful "street fighters" & brainwashing them into supersoldiers). Interpol & the U. S. military (represented by series regular good guys Chun-Li & Guile) involve themselves by trying to warn Ryu before he's endangered.

It doesn't have a deep narrative, and it probably won't appeal to anyone not already familiar with the games, but if you do fall into the fan base there's a lot to like here. Ryu's wandering nature provides ample opportunities for most (if not all) of the playable characters of the time to make an appearance, most of which are involved in at least one scuffle. The fights themselves (as well as the true to the game character design) are expertly animated & detailed, with weighty, crunchy impacts that hit hard. The infamous Chun-Li shower scene is another plus (& uncensored on my viewing platform of choice), and is directly followed up by the most tense confrontation in the entire film.

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.

Street fighter the animated movie is a well animated fight fest that serves as a superior companion piece to the revolutionary fighting game on which this anime is based .

Its silly plot is full of holes and would make little sense to a non street fighter fan but not to worry, the story is merely an excuse for street fighter characters to dragon punch and shin kick the hell out of each other, and its in this department that the film delivers on a huge scale.

The battles that these characters have are truly incredible to watch! Well thought out, well animated and just astounding to gawk at, they work just as well as the best live action fight sequences out there. The two stand out fights are a masterfully executed battle between Chun li and Vega that will make your jaw drop and the final climatic battle of the film which wraps everything up in an adrenalin pumping fashion .The animated fighting on display here more than makes up for the films faults like its annoyingly slow establishing shots that seem to go on forever.

Street fighter the animated movie is first-rate animated action that does its source material justice and allows you to contemplate on how good that garbage live action version could have been.

Knowledge gives this : 4 out of 5 (It makes me want to throw fireballs baby!)

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!

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.