The live-action Street Fighter movie, adapted from the 1987 fighting game, opened at No. 1 in the US, nearly doubling the second-place film, and a Weekly Bunshun reviewer who has never played the game found the hero's Japanese home hard to take.
The film follows Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken (Noah Centineo), two gifted martial artists invited by the mysterious fighter Chun-Li (Callina Liang) to a tournament to decide the world's strongest. They are drawn into battles with fierce opponents and a hidden conspiracy. Kitao Sakurai directed; it runs 120 minutes and is in theaters now.
Animation, then live action
The reviewer was thrown first by how the film is built. The opening scenes of Ryu and Ken's past are drawn in hand-drawn-style animation. From a scene six years later, the film turns to live action.
The characters wear costumes in primary colors that look like cosplay. They spin through the air, smash through walls and fire orbs of light from their hands. Strong-looking figures keep arriving to punch, kick, fly and break things for 120 minutes, the reviewer wrote.
A tournament with a hidden purpose
There is a story underneath. The tournament at the center of the film has a hidden purpose. Chun-Li turns out to be an Interpol investigator, and she works in the shadows to avenge her father.
Ryu and Ken carry a past that binds them too. The result is a tournament, a conspiracy, a revenge quest and a friendship piled into one film.
The biggest sticking point for the reviewer was the Japanese-style house where Ryu and Ken live. It is exactly the Japan an American would imagine, the reviewer wrote. Sakurai was born in Japan and the film is a Japan-US co-production, which made the house more disappointing still.
The reviewer settled on a different way to watch: with a drink, among friends, calling out at the big moments and laughing at the rest.
The moves fans came for
The set pieces are the special moves familiar from the game. The Hadoken and the Shoryuken both appear.
The film is made for fans who want to see how far the game's world has been reproduced, the reviewer wrote. For a lost outsider who wandered in, the ending that teases a sequel drew one response: "I'm full."