I’ll never forget the day “Street Fighter: The Movie” came out in 1994, because I couldn’t convince my parents to go. They said it looked inane and the reviews were terrible, so instead we saw Gillian Armstrong’s “Little Women.” My parents won that round. “Little Women” was a masterpiece, and when I finally rented “Street Fighter” on home video many months later, I had to concede that it was, in fact, inane.
Steven E. de Souza’s live-action adaptation starred Raul Julia as the villain, Bison, and, even though he was literally dying at the time, he went all out, delivering one of the great camp performances. As the decades wore on and the reboot “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li” made no impression, the original “Street Fighter” miraculously aged well. It was nonsense, but it was unapologetic nonsense, anchored by a legendarily good performance by Julia, who is one of history’s greatest actors, and a legendarily bad performance by Jean-Claude Van Damme, who we all like, but is not.
Thirty-three years later, director Kitao Sakurai (“Bad Trip”) has taken another whack at the classic fighting game. He could have made a totally serious fight film with bone-crunching action and huge melodrama, or he could have made it even sillier than the first one, a feat unto itself. Instead, Sakurai made both films simultaneously. The new “Street Fighter” is an action-packed, hyper-stylized, borderline-nonsensical fever dream with a central storyline that begs to be taken seriously. I’m not sure audiences will oblige.
Every time “Street Fighter” goes for the emotional jugular, and you start caring about the strained brotherly love between kung fu masters Ken (Noah Centineo) and Ryu (Andrew Koji), you’re suddenly reminded that everyone looks ridonkulous in their game-accurate costumes, that their dialogue is insipid, and a lot of their hairstyles defy physics — and maybe even god herself. Kitao Sakurai made every possible “Street Fighter” movie at the exact same time. For better and for worse, he succeeded.
Some fans may break out their torches and pitchforks, but I for one embrace this Frankenstein monster. It’s so oblivious to narrative and stylistic cohesion that it’s almost spiritual. Watching “Street Fighter” is to exist outside time itself. That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it, because otherwise there’s no explanation for why this film begins in 1987 with Ryu listening to “What’s Up” by 4 Non Blondes on his walkman, a song which wouldn’t come out for another six years. When the action leaps ahead to 1993, Ken’s manager proudly declares that Taco Bell is going to name a Gordita after him, even though Taco Bell wouldn’t add the Gordita to their menu until a half decade later.
Ordinarily these would be superficial peeves, but “Street Fighter” is so mired in 1990s nostalgia that I daresay anyone in the target demographic will recognize that the timeline is off, Gordita-wise. The film continues a tradition of gradual cultural collapse, wherein everything we associate with a specific decade now co-exists at any given moment within it, anachronisms be damned, in films made decades later. “Street Fighter” is only one step removed from the Adam Sandler comedy “The Wedding Singer,” and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. But it was weird when it happened to Generation X and it’s weird now for Millennials. If you’re Gen Z or younger, this will happen to you, too, I promise, so don’t judge us for feeling old as hell right now.
Centineo and Koji play their roles for real, making jokes the characters would actually make, while pursuing their dreams and processing their baggage. Literally everyone else in “Street Fighter” is playing a kinky cartoon. David Dastmalchian plays Bison, who wants to milk all the fighting power out of Ryu and inject it into his veins to feel macho. He pays homage to Raul Julia — even riffing on one of Julia’s most quotable lines — but without the late actor’s well-earned bravado, Dastmalchian’s version of Bison is a walking metaphor for impotence. That’s not a critique. It’s just canon now.
Chun-Li (Callina Liang) has the same story as usual. She wants to destroy Bison because he murdered her father — except in this film, she’s saddled with a sidekick who obsesses over her cosplay and moans in pleasure when she kicks him in the groin. Cammy (Mel Jarnson) loves to bazooka innocent cars when she’s not drooling half-masticated fruit into Chun-Li’s open hand. Guile (Cody Rhodes) wears his blonde hair like a blacksmith’s anvil and often loses himself while ogling the villainous Vega (Orville Peck), who claws Guile’s face like they just had rough but consensual sex.
There’s nothing wrong with “Street Fighter” being hornier than most pornography, but these fetishes are all over the place. Even if some of the kinks do it for you, there are probably a half dozen that don’t. A lot of people complain that movies are sexless lately, but they can’t complain about “Street Fighter.” Well, I suppose they can, but not about the horniness.
“Street Fighter” also worships the “Street Fighter” video games. Depending on your point of view, that’s either the film’s biggest selling point or its gravest sin. Unlike the recent “Super Mario” movies, it’s not just regurgitating familiar images and sound effects in a cynical, Pavlovian conspiracy to nope out of its cinematic responsibilities. “Street Fighter” may be faithful to the game, but it’s also brash, abrasive cinema, and — achievement unlocked — even weirder than the first live-action film.
Kitao Sakurai takes big chances and they don’t always pay off. Actually, they usually don’t. But his raw enthusiasm for making this goofy-ass action movie is infectious. I’m not sure “Street Fighter” meets any conventional standard of quality, but it’s undeniably its own thing. What even is a “good movie” anyway? Is it a film that meets our expectations or is it a film that isn’t afraid to screw with them? I say if you like your films screwy, in more ways than one, Sakurai’s “Street Fighter” is a success. If you like your films “filmy,” you can get out.
