Street Fighter is a bad movie. Not the worst, but pretty bad for sure. Outside of Raul Julia, in his final theatrical role, who was having fun as the over-the-top villain, everything else was a dud.
Street Fighter
(1994)
Genre(s): Action, Adventure, Science Fiction
Mill Creek Entertainment| PG13 – 102 min. – $34.99 | December 7, 2021
Date Published: 12/16/2021 | Author: The Movieman
|
|
|||||||||||
Mill Creek Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this Blog Post.
The opinions I share are my own.
THE MOVIE — 2/5 |
|
Plot Synopsis: Gen. Bison (RAUL JULIA), the evil dictator of Shadaloo, captures a busload of relief workers and holds them for ransom. Col. Guile (JEAN-CLAUDE VAN DAMME) leads an international strike force to invade Shadaloo and rescue the hostages. Along the way, Guile recruits Chun-Li (MING-NA WEN), a reporter and martial-arts expert whose father was killed by Bison years ago, two young con men (DAMIAN CHAPA, BYRON MANN) and a sumo wrestler (PETER NAVY TUIASOSOPO).
Review: 1994’s Street Fighter’s claim to fame is it’s considered one of the worst movies ever made, forget one of the worst video game adaptations. Personally, and this was my first time seeing it, while certainly not good and just a tad too goofy, it’s not the worst film I’ve encountered, not even in my bottom 20 (see Batman & Robin which was far worse). That being said, although there were a couple fun moments, their attempts to satire or humor mostly fell flat. The acting also ranged from mundane and forgettable with star Jean-Claude Van Damme, who took home a massive $7-8 million payday, pretty much phones in his performance albeit wasn’t helped by terrible dialogue. On the other hand, Van Damme might’ve been high with his reported considerable drug use during production. For his part, and easily the best aspect of the film as the villainous M. Bison. He properly hams it up to the property’s tone and style and put a smile on my face any time he was on screen. Sadly this would be Julia’s final performance as he passed away not too long after filming from a stroke (, which he was dealing with during production. Despite the considerable pain he was in, he still managed to have great on-screen charisma and the loss of his talent is deeply missed.
Outside of Van Damme and Julia, everyone else were throwaway characters with the next recognizable name, at least today as I think she was a relative unknown, was Kylie Minogue as well as Wes Studi playing a secondary villain. As a side, Ming-Na Wen made for a cute Chun-Li and certainly a better version of the character compared to The Legend of Chun-Li. Street Fighter was written and directed by Steven E. de Souza based upon the Street Fighter II video game, is one of many bad adaptations and arguable the worst outside of the aforementioned Street Fighter: Legend of Chun-Li from 2009. This one does make the Resident Evil films look rather competent by comparison. The only positive I can say is there were a few fleeting moments of good fight scenes plus Raul Julia’s fun performances, otherwise this is one to be forgotten. |
SPECIAL FEATURES – 4/5 |
|
This release from Mill Creek comes housed in a SteelBook packaging and has a clear slip cover. There is a M. Bison replica currency included inside. There is a fair amount of features, the new interviews rivals the work done by Shout Factory, honestly… Interviews (TRT 1:17:04):
This is nice to see new interviews with various members of the cast and crew, each one recounting their work on the movie. Some of these are audio only set against footage from the film or the trailer but each still worth checking out. The Making of Street Fighter (5:55) — Short EPK-like featurette made to advertise the film and has on-set interviews. Outtakes (3:08) features just some fly-on-the-wall footage. Deleted Scenes (2:09) — Extra footage shot that didn’t add much of anything to the plot or characters. Crisis in Shadaloo (3:46) — Raw footage of Chun Li’s “reporting” in Shadaloo. Archives (2:09) is some more promotional material, this one showing the video game characters and the actor’s counterparts. Feature Commentary by Writer/Director Steven E. de Souza. And last up are a couple of Theatrical Trailers and TV Spots. |
VIDEO – 2¾/5 |
| Street Fighter receives its second Blu-ray release and based on what I watched, this 1080p high-definition transfer is likely the same one Universal unleashed in 2009, so no restoration work was done. What we get here is a soft looking picture, detail isn’t especially sharp and appears as if DNR software had been applied while colors aren’t terribly bright or vibrant. There were also plenty of minor instances of specs and dirt sprinkled throughout. |
AUDIO – 3½/5 |
| Since I don’t own the “Extreme” edition of Universal’s Blu-ray I can’t do a comparison, however it wouldn’t surprise me if the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is the same as this one. Even so, and while it’s nothing phenomenal, there is some decent enough depth during the action sequences with some punches packing a… well, punch. Dialogue comes across well enough and there were no noticeable instances of pops or other audio ailments. |
OVERALL – 2¾/5 |
|
Street Fighter is a bad movie. Not the worst, but pretty bad for sure. Outside of Raul Julia, in his final theatrical role, who was having fun as the over-the-top villain, everything else was a dud. As for this Steelbook Blu-ray released by Mill Creek Entertainment, the video and audio transfers were not restored however the number of new interviews does make this a tempting pick-up. |
Check out some more 1080p screen caps by going to page 2. Please note, these do contain spoilers.