This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Lack of good storyline.

good back-story, and good acting

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Honestly, perhaps the most perplexing thing about 2009's "Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li" is just how completely and utterly average a movie it really is. It's basically completely sanitary and relatively inoffensive in its structuring, with just competent enough production values and a generally passable cast. But it's so plain and "blah," you can't help but feel yourself starting to nod off should you chose to give it a watch. And I think that's the real problem. It's not the terrible crime against film that it's made out to be... it's just so wholly unremarkable as a movie-going experience, that it feels empty and pointless. It really does remind one of those cheap-o 90's direct-to-video action flicks that used to pollute the video-store shelves back in the day. This feels like the sort-of film you'd rent on a whim because it looks like it might be good for a laugh, watch on a Friday night and forget about a day later. The sort of film Z-grade actors like Antonio Sabato Jr. or Cynthia Rothrock would pop up in and kick some butt while a cheesy synth soundtrack blared in the background. But inexplicably, this one somehow got a theatrical release, a $50 million budget and was tied in to a popular tournament-fighter video-game series. Unfortunately, unlike the other "Street Fighter" live-action adaptation, which at least was semi-comedic and benefited from campy laughs and a great performance by the late Raul Julia... "The Legend of Chun-Li" is just boring and mind-numbing in its standardness.The film follows one of the characters from the "Street Fighter" game series, Chun-Li. When she was only a child, she witnessed the kidnapping of her father by the dreaded M. Bison. Years later, after losing her mother to cancer, she encounters martial-arts master Gen, and trains under him, vowing to get vengeance for her father's abduction. And so, the film degenerates into a standard tale of action and revenge as our heroine faces various thugs and obstacles in her struggles against Bison and his cronies. Yawn.It shouldn't be too surprising that the film is helmed by Polish cinematographer-turned-director Andrzej Bartkowiak. After all, he was already responsible for another extremely bland and toothless video-game adaptation in "Doom", and this film falls into many of the same trappings as that release. Inspired by a video-game source material yet afraid to follow the details and formula of the original work. Filled with lots of high-concept ideas but a slave to clichés. Cast with generally decent performers who are hampered by sub-par screen writing. And assembled with relative competence while simultaneously feeling generic and trite. While Bartkowiak's films might not be as ludicrously awful as other, more infamous video-game movie directors (I'm looking at you, Uwe Boll), in a way, his films are worse. At least the poorer films generate some talking points due to their overt failures... Bartkowiak's are merely wholly forgettable.To give credit where it is due, the film does have some minor strengths. I really liked some of the supporting cast for one. It was really great seeing "Mortal Kombat" star Robin Shou back on the screen as martial-artist Gen, and he's a criminally underrated and highly likable actor. It was also good fun seeing the late Michael Clarke Duncan as one of Bison's main cronies. Some of the action was appropriately thrilling and the effects were generally passable. And there's even a few really fun, schlock-tastic instances of blood and gore in the Unrated version of the film that generate an appropriately queasy response.But the script by Justin Marks is the most basic of the basic, the cinematography is flat and uninspired and lead actress Kristin Kreuk is hilariously un-charismatic, leaving the film just feeling dull. Not terrible. Just dull and average at best. There was really no reason this film should have been tied to "Street Fighter" besides brand recognition, and it could just have easily been re-written to be an "original" story. The purported $50 million is barely visible on- screen and could easily have been slashed in half. And the movie really didn't warrant a release on the big-screen. This really is just about on- par your standard direct-to-video action-thriller. And that's where it should have been released. At least then, I would have known to set my standards a bit lower."Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li" is a 4 out of 10. If you catch it on cable and there's nothing else on, give it a shot. It'll at least kill 90 minutes on a slow afternoon. But if you're thinking about actually paying to rent or buy it, don't bother.

No, it's not amazing and no the story is not an emotional journey that makes you both laugh and cry... but.It's a video-game adaption, and you really can't go in to them thinking they are gonna blow your socks off because really, most of them aren't that great.The 1994 Jean Claude Van Damme adaption was genuinely awful and that was pretty true to the (no) plot of the video-game so of course they had to do something different here, which I am glad they did, not just fighting all the time but an actual story.Now of course the story does have a bunch of plot holes (but honestly what video-game adaption that doesn't?) and Chris Klein's acting in particular is pretty dodgy, he plays a tough guy cop which he tried to do again in CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE (2012) but he fails every time.I like him fine usually but yeah he's not at all believable as a 'bad ass'.Better is Kristin Kreuk in the lead and Michael Clarke Duncan and Neal McDonough are pretty cool as the bad guys.And most of the fight-scenes are pretty well orchestrated (except perhaps the dance-club scene) and the cinematography is good and keeps at a good pace plus a pretty good soundtrack as well.All in all, not a 'great film' but perfectly watchable if you leave your thinking cap on the shelves and just take it for what it is, if you enjoyed ELEKTRA (2005) you should be able to enjoy this... If you didn't (which granted many didn't) then tread carefully I suppose.

Honestly this movie goes down the same path as DragonBall Evolution while being a street fighter movie, it follows its own stupid story, M.Bison wasn't a leader of a drug ring or whatever they said he was and to be honest, i don't like the actor portraying Bison, also what the heck was wrong with Vega? everything was wrong with Vega.... and not to mention... NO RYU? yeah there is no Ryu, no Ken, heck there isn't even a Dan... Im not even going to mention the fact that Chun Li looks white, also where is Akuma, Blanka, or even any of the other Street Fighter characters? in conclusion, stop...just stop it and don't make another bad movie based off a video game... Im looking at you Hit-man:Agent 47

I don't understand why someone think fighting games make good movies. In fighting games you don't need any plot. You play them because of playability. Story can be anything as long as game is fun to play. Only entertaining fighting game movie I have seen is first Mortal Combat. That worked because fighting was the main thing and plot was secondary.This movie has all things that make fighting game movies bad. Fight scenes were bad. They felt like cut and paste fighting. Actors didn't know how to fight and action was made cutting everything to small pieces. If you have seen Hong Kong fighting scenes with talented actors this just look awful.I haven't played the game. I don't know the characters. This movie didn't bother to tell me anything interesting about characters. All the time went with nonsense dialog and Asian bullshido wisdom. Some characters had some superpowers but I didn't get why.There were Finnish crime boss who spoke Finnish. That was nice but I don't give another point for that. Movie is total waste of time. Story is nonsense. Dialog is nonsense. Fight scenes awful. From time to time this looks good but you can watch god movies that look good. It might be hard to find any bad movie entertainment from this since everything is just nonsense and uninteresting.