There is one remaining Street Fighter movie we have yet to cover, and it’s one that most people probably won’t remember. Let's take a moment to discuss Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist.

Assassin’s Fist had a long, circuitous road to getting made. Joey Ansah and Christian Howard created a short film (about 3 minutes long) called Street Fighter: Legacy and released it on YouTube in 2010. Howard played Ken in that video and Ansah—much less prominent on screen—played Akuma. The short served as a proof-of-concept for Capcom, and two years later it was announced that the British duo had been granted the rights to make a larger SF project.

Initially Assassin’s Fist was created as a 12-episode web series, with each episode running about 12 minutes long. This was released on Machinima's YouTube channel in May 2014. Apparently it was recut for TV a year later, this time comprising of six episodes that were 22 minutes long. Finally it was recompiled into a movie and released through IFC Films, which is the version we are discussing here. The movie release of Assassin’s Fist clocks in at 145 minutes, which is about 2 1⁄2 hours long. And that, my friends, is way too long for this movie to be. But more on that a bit later…

I remember really enjoying Assassin's Fist quite a bit when it first came out back in the day. There was clearly a genuine passion for the source material with these film makers, and they appeared to take Street Fighter lore seriously. It was refreshing to see them play it straight and tell SF stories earnestly, without veering too far into camp or outright self-parody. And Assassin’s Fist manages to do this whilst still maintaining a sense of humor and levity that got completely left out of The Legend of Chun-Li, for example.

One aspect of the movie that immediately impressed me was the casting. Ryu and Ken are particularly well cast, and it’s clear that both of these guys trained in martial arts long before they began working on this project. Christian Howard, who plays Ken Masters, looks exactly like the character from the games, especially Street Fighter Alpha. It’s uncanny; I don’t think it’s possible to find someone who more perfectly resembles a fictional character. Ryu’s actor, Mike Moh, also looks great in the iconic white gi, and his kicks look especially impressive.

Fun Fact: After playing Ryu in this movie (and one more project not worth discussing here), Mike Moh went on to play Bruce Lee in Quentin Tarantino’s 2019 film 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood'. Also in 2019, Andrew Koji first took on the lead role of Ah Sahm in the TV series Warrior, which was based on a concept and story treatment by Bruce Lee. Ah Sahm is basically the Bruce Lee stand-in character of that show. And Koji will of course be starring as Ryu in the upcoming Street Fighter movie releasing later this year. So Mike Moh went from playing Ryu to playing Bruce Lee, and Andrew Koji is doing the same, but in reverse. If only Bryon Mann had managed to land the title role in ‘Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story’, the Ryu-to-Bruce-Lee pipeline would have been complete.

One thing I noticed on rewatching Assassin’s Fist is that the Japanese actors seem to turn in strong performances across the board. Akira Koieyama’s Gouken is essentially the heart of the story, and he does a great job with the material he’s given. Togo Igawa is pitch-perfect in his portrayal of Goutetsu…and he also hams it up big time as the weird old man, Gōma. Hyunri Lee does an excellent job with Sayaka, a role that could have easily been cloying and forgettable. (Oh hey, look at that–Sayaka is back from the Street Fighter Alpha: Generations anime! That’s fun.) Even Hal Yamanouchi, playing the groundskeeper Senzo, manages to be genuinely compelling whenever he’s on screen. The Japanese cast handily out acts their English-speaking counterparts in this production.

There is actually a lot of fun material here, especially in details pertaining to Ryu and Ken’s training. I particularly liked how they trained in bespoke kata specific to their esoteric style of martial arts (Ansatsukan). There is plenty of good dialogue about the martial arts and bushido philosophy, usually from Gouken. The kata, training drills, and fight choreography all manage to implement stances and techniques from the games, and I would say they pull it all off surprisingly well. And I liked how they played a Mega Man game…although it’s funny how they used an NES from the US, and not a Famicom from Japan.

The special effects on offer here are certainly not amazing, but good enough to get the job done. Hadoukens probably look the best of the bunch, not nearly as fake looking as you’d expect for a production initially made as a web series. Shoryukens look a bit hokey, since the person performing the Dragon Punch simply rises into the air like an actor being lifted by a wire harness. Hurricane Kicks look alright too, although they don’t really look like the move from the video game.

Now that I’ve highlighted the positive elements of Assassin’s Fist, I should address some negatives. First off, this movie is quite long…so very long…like way too long. Since it wasn’t originally intended to be a film, the extended runtime perhaps makes sense. But they really should have cut down this material quite a bit, and I don’t think they even recut it at all.

The story itself actually adheres pretty faithfully to Street Fighter lore…but that probably hinders more than it helps. The narrative of the games is generally pretty light and minimal, intentionally sparse on important events and details. So the story would naturally need to be fleshed out for a feature-length film. The closest comparison for this movie would have to be Street Fighter Alpha: Generations, an anime that runs only 45 minutes long. Assassin’s Fist is telling more-or-less the same story in 145 minutes, so there’s going to be a lot of time to fill.

One might assume that the solution to a thin story would be to fill your movie with a ton of action-packed fight scenes. However, Assassin’s Fist doesn’t do much of that either. This is probably my biggest complaint about Street Fighter films in general; there simply isn’t enough street fighting! In this movie we have Ryu and Ken sparring some, young Gouken and Gouki spar a bit as well, demonized Akuma fights Goutetsu in a big showdown at least, and then Ryu and Ken have an important match against each other near the end. That’s it. Even when it looks like we’ll get to see Ryu and/or Ken fighting US military guys at the bar, the action is immediately cut short.

The long runtime remains a problem because there isn’t much action; just a bunch of scenes are people talking. The combination of a thin story, insanely long runtime, and dearth of fight scenes really brings down the appeal of Assassin's Fist as a movie. Which is not to say the whole film is terrible, necessarily, but I certainly wouldn’t recommend sitting through it. In fact, I think the ending really illustrates why the production doesn’t work as a film…

The whole movie builds up to the moment that brothers Gouken and Gouki will fight, presumably to the death. Gouki has fully mastered the Satsui no Hadou—the dark corrupting power their master had forbidden them from studying—and in the process, he has essentially become a demon. Thus we can officially call him Akuma at this point. Gouken has been developing Mu no Hadou, or “the power of nothingness”, seeking an enlightened way to practice their art. It’s generally made clear over the course of the film that Gouken fully expects to lose this fight to his brother, and to lose his life in the process.

Then, just when the climatic battle is about to begin, the movie abruptly ends and the credits roll. It’s one of the most bizarre choices I’ve ever seen; so weird for a martial arts film to just completely omit its most important fight. It’s a massive anticlimax to cap off a long and stretched-out story.

Some random thoughts:

Assassin’s Fist was a UK production and apparently filmed in Bulgaria.
The film specifies that Gouken’s dojo is located in Wakayama Prefecture. It also sets the story in 1987, the year that the original Street Fighter game was released.
This movie uses the term “Hadou” (波動) the same way previous media talked about “ki”: a preternatural form of energy found in all things that can be channeled through martial arts.
This story is primarily focused on two types of hadou/ki energy: the Satsui no Hadou (殺意の波動) and Mu no Hadou (無の波動), or “the power of nothingness”. While the Satsui no Hadou (aka “Dark Hadou”) has been the focus of the last three SF animes, this is the first time the Mu no Hadou has been mentioned.
The scene where Ryu and Ken sneak out to a US military bar and get involved in some fighting, would have been a chance to introduce Guile or Charlie Nash. Instead it just ends up being a superfluous cameo for SFIV producer Yoshinori Ono. Boo…
This film shows the ten kanji (天) in forming in the sky for Akuma after he defeats Goutetsu. We saw this same “kanji in the sky” motif used in the Street Fighter Alpha: Generations anime.

All things considered, the film version of Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist is pretty fun, but deeply flawed. It is just way too long, its story is thin, and there isn’t enough martial arts action to satisfy fans of the source material. That said, the production is well-cast and the movie actually has a lot of heart. It’s clear that the filmmakers are fans of the games and their enthusiasm carries through on screen. Now if some heroic editor could just cut this thing down to a lean 90 minutes, it might actually make for a decent movie.