Capcom’s Street Fighter fighting game series have seen many, many adaptations. These range from your OAV anime films that touch the game’s plot but mostly load it up with fight scenes aplenty, to live-action adaptations that end up being less “Street Fighter” and more “GI Joe” but Capcom characters due to lucrative toy line deals.

With this generation’s video game adaptations being closer and more respectable to the source material (see Warner Bros. Mortal Kombat, Sega’s Sonic, and Nintendo’s Mario series of blockbuster films), it’s high time a production house took Capcom’s bread-and-butter fighting game series a little more seriously. Well, as serious as karate people chucking plasmas onto raging dictators and Spanish ninjas can get.

Legendary Pictures and director Kitao Sakurai (Twisted Metal, The Eric Andre Show) understood the assignment, and what we ended up is a Street Fighter that’s lore accurate (to a degree), and just as zany and messy as you expect a Street Fighter plot to be.

Round 1, Fight

In what is basically Legendary’s version of Street Fighter Alpha’s plot, martial artist former friends Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken Masters (Noah Centineo) have to resolve their differences as they end up being recruited for a new World Warrior Tournament by a mysterious lady named Chun-Li (Callina Liang). She’s under the employ of Lord M.Bison (David Dastmalchian), an arrogant dictator who is looking for strong opponents to siphon Psycho Power from so that he’s the strongest around. Oh, and somehow a military guy with a stupid haircut named Guile (Cody Rhodes), a rogue boxer (50 Cent), a Spanish ninja (Orville Peck), and an Indian mystic (Vidyut Jammwal) get involved in the tournament, along with a dark past of Ryu in the form of Akuma (Roman Reigns).

If you know your Street Fighter lore, you know certain characters aren’t what they seem. If you don’t, it may be a bit tough to figure out; the actor’s one-to-one portrayals of their video game counterparts means this film is clearly for the fans and 90s arcade gamers who are already grown up and have kids of their own. And when you think about the show’s overall plot involving the behind-the-scenes part of the tournament and M.Bison’s motley crew along with his endgame, it’s all just thrown at you with no rhyme or reason and just sticking to the material’s plot beats, not caring if you’re caught up.

Street Fighter does a smart job in just focusing on Ryu and Ken’s friendship, animosity, and budding bromance, with the rest of the plot being in the background and just an excuse for more fights for the two to partake in. Whether it’s with mobs or in a one-on-one format during the tournament, the action is shot really well with little to no distracting fast edits and cuts. Yes, a good number of the game’s special moves are portrayed well, but they’re not shoehorned terribly and work in the flow of the fight and choreography at play. Callina Liang’s Chun-Li brings in boss lady energy from start and the middle parts of the film, but does fizzle out in favour of the white-and-red-duo. Dastmalchian’s M.Bison may not look the part at first, but he is channeling Raul Julia’s 90s aura and really tries. My personal standouts is Jason Momoa’s Blanka, a big green guy who pops in, does a fight, and helps out Ryu. A short but nonetheless fun side character distraction at best.

The film also uses a good amount of 2D animation for flashbacks and context-setting; yes, we get to witness the famous Ryu vs. Sagat fight and also Ryu’s master Gouken getting mauled by Akuma, and a few tragic pasts in snippets for characters like Chun-Li and Blanka. Yeah, the game’s roster is freaky, as Legendary Pictures really did their best in cramming the eight World Warriors without making the cast feel bloated. It is a budget-conscious choice that works stylistically: both the live-action renditions and animations match each other in colour palette and tone, about as bombastic and loud as its source material.

You Win!

It took years, but this mostly live-action adaptation of the zany Street Fighter storyline is seminally entertaining, especially for those who like the lore and just expecting a decent action flick out of it, nothing more. Just check your brain at the door and enjoy the flashy kung-fu and choreographed fighting spectacle featuring giant green men with electric powers and dark side karate accompanied with some banging martial arts soundtrack goodness. If you start thinking about the second half of the story and its logical conclusion, your brain might sting like a ranked match upset loss by a wakeup Super Art.

Final Score: 70/100