MOVIEWATCHIN' PSYCHOPATH

STREET FIGHTER:

THIRD FILM ITERATION EMBRACES ITS SILLY VIDEO GAME ROOTS!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: *** out of 4

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Ryu, Chun-Li, Ken, and the rest in Street Fighter (2026)

The world of Street Fighter returns to the big screen…again…in…well, Street Fighter, the latest film adaptation of the popular Capcom video game series of the same name. In case you couldn’t tell by the description, this is not the first time Street Fighter was adapted to a theatrical feature film, as there was already a Street Fighter movie in 1994 starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile and Raul Julia as the evil M. Bison.

I’m no Street Fighter expert in terms of the games, but I’ve played some before and recognize a fair amount of the characters, like Mortal Kombat; I’m a pretty casual fan of this series. It’s definitely an important and influential video game franchise; between that and Mortal Kombat, they became the gold standards for fighting games.

The 1994 Street Fighter movie is an incredibly stupid film with cheesy dialogue, hilariously miscast characters, and hardly anything to do with Street Fighter. With that said, the late Raul Julia is a freaking treasure as M. Bison, a great scenery-chewing villain who’s always entertaining to watch.

The second film, 2009’s Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, i is straight-up awful; in fact, I consider it one of the worst video game movies of all time and one of the worst films,s period, I’ve ever seen. It takes what should be a bright and silly action film and turns it into a dull, generic movie that tries to take itself seriously and lacks just about all the fun of both the games and the previous film.

Now we have this new reboot directed by Kitao Sakurai (The Eric Andre Show, Aardvark, Bad Trip) that definitely seemed to capture more of the spirit of the source material than the previous films in terms of the trailer. Characters actually resemble their in-game counterparts, tons of quips and one-liners, over-the-top fights, and Hadoukens and Shoryukens beingthrown,; it’s like…a freaking Street Fighter movie!

While I can’t say this film reaches the height of Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Exit 8, or the new Resident Evil, this was an enjoyable time at the movies. I’m not going into a Street Fighter movie expecting bold stories and deeply complex characters; just give me a bunch of colorful characters beating the shit out of each other with enough of them that I’m invested in and some silly and hammy dialogue, and I’m good; that’s what this movie gave me.

The film follows estranged street fighters Ryu (Andrew Koji-Warrior, Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins, Bullet Train) and Ken Masters (Noah Centino-To All the Boys franchise, Black Adam, The Recruit) getting thrown back into combat when the mysterious Chun-Li (Callina Liang-Presence, Bad Genius, Tell Me Everything) recruits them to participate in the next World Warrior Tournament. However, behind this fighting tournament lies a deadly conspiracy with the sinister M. Bison (David Dastmalchian-The Dark Knight, Ant-Man trilogy, The Suicide Squad (2021)) that forces them to fight against each other and the demons from their past.

The film also stars Roman Reigns (Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, Rumble, Zootopia 2) as Akuma, Cody Rhodes (Arrow, The Naked Gun (2025)) as Guile, Andrew Schulz (Guy Code, White Men Can’t Jump (2023), Miami Vice ’85) as Dan Hibiki, Eric André (The Eric Andre Show, Jackass Forever, Happy Gilmore 2) as Don Sauvage, Vidyut Jammwal as Dhalsim, Orville Peck as Vega, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson (Get Rich or Die Tryin’, Southpaw, Den of Thieves) as Balrog, Jason Momoa (Game of Thrones, DC Extended Universe, A Minecraft Movie) as Blanka, Oliver Richters (Black Widow, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Reacher) as Zangief, Hirooki Goto (Kamen Rider Zero-One the Movie: RealxTime) as E. Honda, Rayna Vallandingham (Cobra Kai, Citadel, Underdog Kids) as Juli, Don Lee as Gouken, Kyle Mooney (Saturday Night Live, Batman VS Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Y2K) as Marvin, Alexander Volkanovski as Joe, and Mel Jarnson (Mortal Kombat (2021), Blacklight, Witchboard) as Cammy.

Overall, Street Fighter objectively is a mess in terms of story and characters, but unlike previous film versions, this one fully embraces the silliness of the source material and finally gives a relatively faithful rendition of Street Fighter on the big screen. I could tell the people making this really cared about Street Fighter and wanted to put as much from the games as possible, from screen-accurate characters and moves to nods and references,s and it isn’t trying to take itself seriously like Legend of Chun-Li.

The action scenes are fun and filled with zany energy.y, I thought the fight between Ryu and Blanka was entertaining, and Chun-Li, Ken, and Dan teaming up to fight a corrupted Ryu in the climax was great,t especially if you’re a Street Fighter IV fan. This really is a live-action Street Fighter in the best way.

Most of the actors fittheir roles welle, ll especially Andrew Koji’s Ryu and Noah Centino’s Ken, who not only look like their in-game counterparts but have great banter throughout the movie that leads to some good laughs. Though I will say Noah Centino’s approach as Ken was very interesting and not what I expected from the character, it reminded me of Karl Urban’s Johnny Cage from Mortal Kombat II if he was a complete dipshit instead of an egotistical actor.

I’m split on David Dastmalchian’s M. Bison because on one hand, he can be entertaining to watch and chews the scenery often, but he didn’t really capture the might and intimidation of the character. Raul Julia, for as silly as he was in the 1994 film,m was genuinely threatening when he needed to be and commanded the scene; he didn’t really get much of that out of Dastmalchian, sadly, but maybe his performance will improve if a sequel happens.

As a movie, I can’t say Street Fighter works completely because the plot is your generic fighting tournament story,y and aside from Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, and Dan, many of the characters range from quick cameos or a few lines of dialogue and a fight, but this film is much closer to what I was looking for in a Street Fighter movie than the previous attempts. It’s goofy, energized, over-the-top fun with endearing enough main characters;s, it’s a dumb popcorn flick done right, and I’ll gladly see a Round 2 if more films are on the way.