Street Fighter : L'Ultime Combat

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.

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.

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.

"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!