The Revenge of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 16 - Street Fighter

Some people may wonder about my method for choosing these films – is there a list? Well yes Kind of, there are some films I do plan on doing. But in a lot of cases I’m just rummaging about my embarrassingly large video collection and grabbing the first thing that strikes me.

Like today’s film – Street fighter.

Ugh what a rotten confused inept mess of a film. While the She Creature had not a lot happening for a while –t here is a lot happening but really not a lot of it makes any sense.

A caveat I don’t know a lot about the game Street fighter (or Mortal Kombat for that matter) I remember playing it maybe once or twice in the 90’s getting my butt kicked by the machine (quickly) and deciding I had other ways to waste my time and money – like pinball. So I don’t know the back stories that come with the games of the various fighters but form the reviews I understand isn’t that important because they don’t use them in the movie anyway.

While I don’t know much – I know that street fighter is a fighting game – as in fist to the face kick t other head martial arts mayhem - so you’d think in a movie based on the game that’s what you would get – fights and lots of them – but no not really. We get an awful lot of plot – most of which is pretty confusing and rather pointless really – the entire idea of this film is kicks to the head – you can sacrifice plot for that you know. This film sacrifices kicks to the head for plots of mass confusion where JeanClaude Van Damn is a major in some sort of UN like military organization leading an attack on General Bison played by Raul Julia.

Yes Raul Julia – Gomez Addams, Archbishop Romero, that one. He gets the manic down pretty well but there are a few problems here.

Raul is not a martial artist – not a crime but neither he (or his stunt double) look well like they are really doing what the movie insists they are doing.

And Raul died of cancer shortly after the film was finished – and honestly he just looks awful. It’s not his fault really – but you tend to look awful when you’re dying. Comes with the territory. But it adds a real note of well creepiness to watching the whole thing. At least it does to me. Raul is so obviously unwell that it hurts to watch him.

And the other thing is that even sick as he was he easily out acts everybody in the cast – especially JeanClaude who mostly mutters or yells.

There are some other characters of course but they sort of drift in and out of the story – there is an Asian woman who has a sumo wrestler side kick , two con men of sorts who now martial arts – there’s a guy who has a steel mask on his face (he doesn’t say much which in this film is good) there is a Russian guy who is the dimwitted comic relief (and who makes you want to hurt yourself while watching) there is a young black guy who is the other comic relief that is borderline racist (and again makes you want to hurt yourself while watching) and all of their stories converge after many car chases and gun battles (which is the problem with the this film – Mortal Kombat – as bad as that film was – at least kept the idea of the game two folks wailing the shit out of each other at the forefront) at General Bison’s hq were hostages are being held and a friend of JeanClaude has been turned into a kind of greenish hulk thing (apparently he’s in the game so they felt the need to jam him in there. A lot of these characters are just jammed into the film any old way ) and they all kind of fight – the main fight is between Jean and Raul – Raul’s character has some kind of jet boot power – which when used makes a merely silly film into really awful one – it’s a dreadful effect and doesn’t work and even if the game character had that power – the film didn’t need to show it. They weren’t so careful about the other characters why this bit? It’s a mystery really.

The director (who is also the screen writer) has much to answer for here (he’s also the writer director of Hudson Hawk so sadly this film isn’t his greatest sin against movie making. The film is a confused unfunny (despite its insisting to us that there are clever touches in the film) noisy mess that unfortunately made money adding to the general sense that with video game films all you needed was a lot of explosions and folks would come. Which explains both Bloodrayne movies at the very least.

Enjoy with Puerto Rican rum. You’ll need it. Lots of it.