The two cops are hunting Bison because he's chosen to sort of reenact the plot of Dolph Lundgren's 1989 version of The Punisher. I bet she got top marks in these arenas back at police academy. Her specialties include looking hot, wearing form fitting outfits, and taking off her top. Maya Sunee (Moon Bloodgood) playing a sexy woman of ambiguous nationality and loose sexual mores. It's like one of those bad, stereotypical roles written for a hulking black guy, except they gave it to a very middle of the road, unimposing Caucasian actor. He plays his character, Charlie Nash, sort of like a young Nicholas Cage channeling Dirty Harry in the middle of a coke binge. It's the kind of surreal, whacked out strangeness that can become legend. From the moment he is awkwardly introduced to hip-hop music until the moment the movie ends (with an over the top titlecard), Klein's performance is stunning. No, this movie has Chris Klein playing the most absurd badass cop of all time. These scenes are fun, and it's nice to see an action movie about a woman that doesn't feature endless scenes of ogling her T&A, but in spite of what the subtitle would have you believe, she is not the center of this movie. It's bizarre, over the top, and never, ever boring.Ībout half of the movie deals with Li. That creepy looking Asian dude from The Black Eyed Peas fights with a Freddy Kruger claw. People make fireballs with no explanation. Bison rips a baby out of its mother's womb and transfers all of his "goodness" into it. A Street Fighter aficionado might find the strange magical elements that appear at the one-hour mark might be frustrating or out of place, but to a virgin to the series, it's just nifty.Īnd once the magic kicks in, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li becomes a wild ride that approaches the sublime level of strangeness that many 80s B-action movies strived for. All I know is what the Chun-Li of this movie is. I don't know what Chun-Li is "supposed" to be. As I watched Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li I realized that my very loose knowledge of the franchise lore might well be an advantage. I don't really play video games, so I don't know, but I seemed to remember some of these monikers from the 1994 incarnation, Street Fighter: The Movie. I have gone out of my way to name characters in this review because I'm pretty sure that most of the principal cast is based loosely upon versions of characters from the game. This movie doesn't really use the idea that well, but I'm pretty sure an industrious young talent could find a way to put it to good use. Now, this system has limitations, namely, it necessitates massive amounts of redundant voiceover work that result in cringe-worthy dialogue like, "Was this mysterious scroll a message?". With only about a 3 rd of the movie actually in English (and a story logic for why the characters are speaking English in China and Thailand), and another third of the movie using extensive Sin City levels of narration, this movie could play comfortably in both the US and China and appear to be locally produced content. I'm not sure if this was intentional, but this method could be used as a new approach to localizing cinema. There is a good 20-30 minutes of it in Chinese, a good 20-30 minutes of it is in English, and a good 20-30 minutes of it is silent with expository narration. Stylistically the movie is pretty interesting. Sadly, the film does not find a way to work piano prowess into any of the action scenes. After she is given a secret scroll telling her to head to Bangkok and seek out the mysterious Gen, Li finds herself in a position to make good use of her martial arts training in various venues, including streets. Years later, Li (Kristin Kreuk) has grown up to be a very pretty (and half white!) concert pianist/Wushu expert. Bison (Neal McDonough) shows up and kidnaps her wealthy father with the help of Balrog (Michael Clarke Duncan, laughing like Dr. She's a pretty little Asian girl studies Wushu and dreams of being a concert pianist.
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