‘Street Fighter’ movie review: Fists, fetishes and a fighting chance at cult status

Account subscription benefits alongside Premium Stories, Editorials, Opinions and more. Unlock these with Subscription

Fighter games have always posed an obnoxious little problem for Hollywood. While action games, adventure games, horror games, RPGs and narrative-driven games feature some semblance of storytelling to be excavated, expanded or improved by a screenwriter with a functioning frontal lobe, fighter games are fundamentally about selecting a colourful meathead and beating another colourful meathead into submission. Mortal Kombat has repeatedly attempted to alchemise the knuckle-dragging simplicity of this concept into cinema, with results ranging from tolerable to terminally embarrassing, while Tekken has also thrown its hat into the ring without leaving the competition quaking in its boots. Now, following the 1994 Street Fighter starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and the late, great Raul Julia, Capcom’s pugilistic freak show returns for another crack at the big screen. Round 2. Fight!

Directed by Kitao Sakurai and scripted by Sakurai and T. J. Fixman, the uninitiated require little homework for the source material beyond understanding that eccentric martial artists from across the globe convene to beat the ever-loving crap out of one another. The story opens in 1987, when Japanese martial artist Ryu (Andrew Koji) defeats Sagat in the inaugural World Warrior tournament, inadvertently awakening the dark power associated with Akuma (Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoa’i), who promptly murders Ryu’s mentor, Gouken (Don Lee), and torpedoes the relationship between Ryu and his adoptive brother, Ken Masters (Noah Centineo). Six years later, M. Bison (David Dastmalchian), the megalomaniacal dictator of Shadaloo, announces another tournament in Metrolao City, prompting Chun-Li (Callina Liang) to round up fighters from across the globe. Beyond this perfunctory scaffolding, the screenplay proceeds to haemorrhage narrative coherence with reckless abandon. The writers jettison any semblance of plot in favour of an uninterrupted parade of smart-arsed quips and deranged non sequiturs, until the credits roll.

I think the only sensible way to introduce this outlandish ensemble is to

Callina Liang’s Chun-Li: The sole adult supervising this martial arts kindergarten.

David Dastmalchian’s M. Bison: Dictatorship with a humiliation fetish.

Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson’s Balrog: Knuckle sandwiches with a platinum discography.

As if this troupe of muscular weirdos are bizarre enough already, Street Fighter is also shamelessly salacious, and its libidinal appetites are indiscriminately scattershot. The film lurches between a succession of slo-mo flesh-on-flesh or gratuitous face-to-face posturing, while most characters seem to have a latent kink the screenplay is itching to indulge — Dastmalchian’s Bison practically climaxes at the prospect of another man’s muscular potency coursing through his veins, Guile’s macho bluster comes with a queer subtext the film keeps needling, and Vega flaunts his femboy allure with spectacular brazenness. 50 Cent literally even says “who’s meat do I need to beat”.