As mentioned in our last Street Fighter movie review, 2009 was an important year for the fighting game series. Street Fighter IV came to home consoles in February 2009, and included in its Collector's Edition was a 65-minute animated film called Street Fighter IV: The Ties That Bind. Yet almost no one remembers the anime because that same month saw the release of a live-action Hollywood movie. Yes my friends, we are finally here to discuss the video game adaptation that really is as bad as everyone says, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.

Quick tangent: Mike and I were pretty excited for a new Street Fighter movie in 2009 and I took my girlfriend (at the time) along with us to see it in theaters. Back then I figured that even if it wasn’t the greatest movie, it should at least be a funny, lighthearted good time, perhaps like the campy 1994 movie. Well as it turns out, it wasn’t just a bad movie, it was a dark, joylessly, tortuously bad movie. If my girlfriend had dumped me then and there, I think it probably would have been justified. After that, I never insisted she accompany me to a movie she wasn’t genuinely interested to see. For years afterward, the main thing I remembered about this movie was the embarrassment of taking my girlfriend to see it.

Now, 17 years later, let us reevaluate The Legend of Chun-Li. Let’s look at this film with fresh eyes and open hearts, and see if we can find the good in there. I mean, hey, the DVD has a whole host of Special Features, perhaps we'll learn something interesting. My DVD included the original theatrical release of the movie and an "Unleashed Unrated” version, so of course, I opted to watch the new unrated cut. But from what I can find online, unrated version basically just includes a few more shots of CGI blood, gore, and a couple extra headshots courtesy of Charlie Nash. I certainly didn’t notice any significant differences from the movie I saw ages ago.

First off, I feel like I should comment on the strange casting choices made in this movie. Kristin Kreuk was apparently the studio’s first choice for Chun-Li, and as much as I generally like her, I don’t quite understand why. The actor is half Asian, sure, but she doesn’t really have the muscular physique of the video game character. The movie makes sure to establish right off the bat that this Chun-Li was born in the United States, and that she’s half Chinese and half white. Now, if you wanted to give an explanation for why Chun-Li doesn’t look particularly Chinese, I guess the mixed parentage makes some sense. However, there really is no reason to retcon this character to be American.

Neal McDonough plays Bison. And M. Bison’s ethnicity isn’t really specified in the games, nor is it important to the series lore, so no big deal. However, they still make a point of establishing that this Bison is the orphaned child of Irish missionaries. It seems like the filmmakers felt obligated to explain why a lily white blonde boy grew up in the Bangkok slums? This Bison also slips into an Irish accent at random points in the film, which is…uh…an unexpected artistic choice.

And then there’s Taboo, from the Black Eyed Peas, who’s playing Vega. He’s not really an actor, of course, more of musician. But his family is Mexican, so of course they thought he’d be the perfect choice to play a Spanish ninja.

Who is the actor playing Chun-Li’s friend at the piano recital? Ok, looks like the character’s name is Lucy and she’s played by Krystal Vee. Vee honestly looks more like the iconic video game character than Kristin Kreuk does. Was she ever in the running for the lead role?

Neal McDonough’s version of Bison as mobster-style “businessman” works well enough, I guess. A cutthroat real estate tycoon gentrifying the slums may be a more plausible villain in real life, but it makes for a pretty generic bad guy overall. And holy lord, the origin story they give Bison in this movie is just extremely disturbing for no reason at all. Gross…

So Chun-Li’s father is initially kidnapped by Bison in the beginning instead of killed. Then her mother dies after a long bout of illness. But do we ever learn what her father actually does? Like, why abduct him? If it’s just for his business contacts, you wouldn’t think that Bison would need to keep him prisoner for literal years. Then, in the back half of the movie, Bison finally kills her father anyway. I just don’t understand why the movie was written the way it is; it’s baffling.

This version of Chun-Li has lived a privileged life of luxury. It was so luxurious, in fact, that she became a concert pianist for her job. Must be nice to spend all of one’s time practicing a musical instrument. Then she receives a mysterious scroll, her mom dies, and—before you know it—she’s living on the street in Bangkok. She goes from a mansion full of servants to begging for food in the streets. Why though? What is the point of this disjointed and largely implausible origin story?

Chris Klein’s Charlie Nash is amazing. This man isn’t generally considered a great actor, but he is definitely acting the hell out of this part. The 1994 Hollywood Street Fighter movie had Raul Julia to elevate it through sheer charisma, and this movie apparently has Chris Klein. It’s like he’s the only person who knows this movie is going to bomb spectacularly and he’s just here to enjoy the ride.

Who is the Detective Maya that Nash is working with? And why isn’t that character just Chun-Li? Again, the actor playing Maya, Moon Bloodgood, probably resembles the video game Chun-Li a bit more than Kristin Kreuk. (And wow, what a name! Seriously, why isn’t she headlining this movie?) There were a few moments in the super dark shootout scene at the docks that I couldn’t tell if I was looking at Bloodgood or Kreuk. Surely this actor must have been considered for the lead role at some point, right? Right?

Oh, and Fun Fact: Apparently it is revealed somewhere in the special features that Detective Maya is based on C.Viper from SFIV. You know, the new character from the newest Street Fighter game that had just released on home consoles right about the same time this movie hit theaters. Ok… Well that sounds like some last-minute retcon bull$#!& to me. But it’s also a meaningless attempt at fan service, so who cares?

Good lord…the wire-fu in this movie is truly terrible. Almost all of the fighting portrayed in the film is limp, floaty nonsense, where the physics involved make no sense, and all strikes lack any impact. Poor Kristin Kreuk must have spent long stretches of time on set strung up in a harness, swinging this way and that, in an acrobatic effort to make this trash look good. Alas, it really didn’t work. Did they not hire professional martial artists to choreograph a few practical fight scenes? Is this discount wuxia junk really the best they could come up with? I know wire-fu was kind of the style at the time, but it just sucks so bad. Particularly for a live-action Street Fighter movie, this level of hilariously bad fight choreography is unforgivable.

In this film, Gen started a secret society called the “Order of the Web”. It sounds like something that would appear in Spiderverse or another Spider-Man adjacent movie. It’s funny that the screenwriter just made up a fictional organization of good guys for Chun-Li to join and fight for. And funnier still to imagine that now she’ll have to get a spider web tattoo on her hand. That detail is certainly not pulled from the source material.

The computer generated effects in this movie are extremely bad. When Gen or Chun-Li are charging up a fireball, it looks about as fake as such a thing could possibly be. The CGI explosions are also just embarrassing. It is very clear which effects are practical pyrotechnics and which ones are phony CGI.

In the club scene, Chun-Li uses her feminine wiles and sick dance moves to lure a crimeboss woman to the ladies room. Then she goes straight into beating her up for information. I couldn’t help but notice this scene was cut in such a way that we don’t actually see how Chun-Li makes it out of the bathroom. Two armed guards were forcing their way through the door, and the next thing you know, Chun-Li is out of the bathroom and making a break for it. Turns out there is a deleted scene that shows Chun-Li throwing a lighted mirror at the guards and—due to water all over the floor—electrocuting them in the process. I guess this particular action beat was just too stupid even for this movie and got cut.

Then, before the club scene is over, Chun-Li fights multiple opponents using a stripper pole, straight-up kills a man with his own gun, and performs the dumbest-possible-looking Spinning Bird Kick ever put to film. I wish this could be a so-bad-it’s-good situation, but unfortunately it’s just really, really bad.

Taboo from the Black Eyed Peas plays Vega and—surprise, surprise—he isn’t good. Like, he’s not a good actor, obviously, but he’s also not really handsome enough for SF’s maniac matador. The fight scene between Vega and Chun-Li is underwhelming and laughably silly, but at least it’s rather brief. Wasn’t another Black Eyed Pea, Will.I.am, in that X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie? Man, these guys sure do love appearing in terrible films.

Much like with the 1994 Street Fighter, there are more gunfights in this movie than actual street fighting. Why does Hollywood insist on shootouts in what should be straightforward martial arts action flicks? Even Balrog, a physically imposing boxer, pulls a gun and shoots at his opponent in multiple scenes. It doesn’t fit the source material and it’s just super weird.

Whoa, I forgot that Gen kills Balrog in this movie! And he appears to do so using a pipe full of liquid nitrogen? Wait, weren’t they planning to make sequels to this film? Surely, Balrog and Vega were planned to appear in a SF2 movie in the future. Did the filmmakers just forget about that?

Every time Bison punches or kicks someone the audio effect for the hit appears to include the sound of a lion roaring. At first I thought I was just hearing things, but there is definitely a lion roar sound effect slipped in with every Bison strike. Uh, why? I don’t recall Bison having any connection to lions—or any animals really—in either the games or this movie’s story. So why insert such an odd little audio cue?

The final showdown between Chun-Li and Bison is probably the best fight of the movie, and it is still quite awful. But at least this bout had a bit more hand-to-hand combat than our hero used throughout the rest of the film. Hitting Bison with a fireball would have been a good enough way to end things…so of course the film makers opted to have Chun-Li execute the villain by snapping his neck. With her legs. After jumping down onto his body from like two stories up. And then magically flipping around his neck like a human wrench. Before magically flipping down to ground level to stick the superhero landing. Hmm, I didn’t realize Chun-Li can basically fly.

Some random thoughts:

Through her training with Gen—in particular, seated meditation—Chun-Li learns to do the Kikoken, her fireball from the games. Ok, but Gen never had a projectile attack in the games. Seems weird that he’d be the person to teach her that.
This movie is largely set/filmed in Bangkok, but Sagat doesn’t appear at all. Bison, Balrog, and Vega are all here, but not the Street Fighter boss who is actually Thai. That’s kind of weird, don’t you think? It looks this year’s upcoming SF movie might also omit the King of Muay Thai.
I forgot about Bison having a daughter named Rose in this movie. Definitely an original interpretation of the SFA character Rose and her relationship to Bison. Also, it’s unclear to me why she’s Russian in this movie. Like seriously, why is she Russian?
Bison’s criminal organization gets a new pronunciation in this film. It was called “Shadaloo” in the 1994 live-action Street Fighter, although it was a fictional country in that movie. It was called “Shadowlaw” in SF2: The Animated Movie. This time they split the difference and pronounce it “Shado-LAO”.
At the very end, Gen mentions an upcoming Street Fighter tournament and name drops main series protagonist Ryu. Except that he mispronounces the character’s name as “Rai-yu”, just like they did in the 1994 live-action movie. Geez guys, how can you still mess this up?
DVD starts with trailers of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Dragon Ball Evolution, and a John Cena movie called 12 Rounds. Oof… Based on the quality level of each film, these are actually perfect choices for the demographic who would watch this terrible movie on DVD.
The DVD’s Extra Features has a “Sneak Peek” look at Marvel vs. Capcom 2, the 2009 release for PS3. If that wasn’t odd enough, the video uses the song “The Touch” from The Transformers: The Movie (1986).
The DVD’s Extra Features also has a section called “Recreating the Game: Arcade To Film Comparisons”. This is a set of side-by-side still images that feature character art from the video games alongside photos of the actors portraying those characters in the film. So there’s Chun-Li art with Kristin Kreuk, M. Bison art with Neal McDonough, Vega art with Taboo, and Balrog art with Michael Clarke Duncan. And, man oh man, is it rough! I cannot believe that someone thought this “Special Feature” was a good idea.

So after rewatching the movie in 2026, is The Legend of Chun-Li really that bad? Yes, it is. Is it worse than the Van Damme/Raul Julia Street Fighter? Absolutely. Is it the worst Street Fighter movie ever made (even including parodies like Jackie Chan’s City Hunter)? Big time, it doesn’t get any worse than this.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li fails on every conceivable level. The casting is wrongheaded, resulting in this movie’s characters only vaguely resembling the characters from the game. The martial arts action is absolutely terrible, with a glut of wirework acrobatics desperately thrown on screen to fill a void bereft of passable fight choreography. The plot is nonsensical. The tone of the movie is needlessly dark, somber, and joyless. There is no fun to be had anywhere in this script! Well, with the exception of Chris Klein, who at least appears to be having a good time with this schlock. Honestly, I feel bad for everyone who worked on this movie, because it really is a complete trainwreck.