A loud, daft love letter to the arcade that takes too long to throw its first Hadouken. The fights and soundtrack slap, Akuma rules and Bison is just weird.
I grew up feeding coins into a Street Fighter II cabinet, and when everyone else was picking Ryu and Ken, I was the one mashing out Akuma’s Raging Demon. So I walked into the new live-action Street Fighter with low expectations and a big grudge from 1994. I walked out grinning. It’s not a good film in any way a film school would recognise. It is a very good night out if you ever wore out a joystick.
The critics mostly hate it. Stuff’s review calls it “a campy ’90s nostalgia ride and a complete mess”, and it sat at 41% on Rotten Tomatoes after its first 49 reviews. Fair enough. They’re also mostly not the people who knew Akuma’s input off by heart.
Director Kitao Sakurai sets the whole thing in 1993, which is the right call. Andrew Koji’s Ryu and Noah Centineo’s Ken are estranged ex-training buddies, still messed up by something that happened years earlier, and they get dragged into a tournament with M. Bison (David Dastmalchian) pulling the strings. The rest of the roster turns up: Callina Liang as Chun-Li, Jason Momoa as Blanka, Cody Rhodes as Guile, 50 Cent as Balrog, Vidyut Jammwal as Dhalsim, and Roman Reigns as Akuma.
Let’s start with my guy. Reigns doesn’t say much, and he doesn’t need to. Akuma looks and moves like he walked straight off the cabinet art, and every scene he’s in feels dangerous. I wasn’t the only one who noticed: DiscussingFilm called him “a nightmarish and intimidating presence” and singled out the Evil Ryu vs Akuma fight, scored to White Zombie, as “pretty badass”. It is. That’s the scene I’ll be rewatching when it hits streaming.
The fights are good. They aren’t shaky-cam mush either: they’re properly choreographed, the special moves land, and you can see them happen. Even the critics who panned the film agree on this one. CGMagazine says the fight sequences “hold nothing back”, ComicBookMovie says the action is “handled very well”, and Inverse praises the “bone-crunching fight choreography”. The 2D-animated flashbacks (made with animation studio Titmouse) are a cool touch too.
My problem is there isn’t enough of it. For a movie literally called Street Fighter, there’s a lot of street and not much fighter. ComicBookMovie picked up on the same thing, noting there are fewer tournament fights than you’d expect, and DiscussingFilm points out Guile and Zangief only get a move or two each. I wanted more.
The first hour is slow. It takes a long time to set up the backstory, the beef between Ryu and Ken, and a pile of side characters, and the film spends that time on story when what you actually want is fights. It’s nearly two hours long (119 minutes), and AbsoluteGeeks says that runtime drags, with plotlines set up and then forgotten. Inverse calls the pacing “erratic”. Once the second half kicks in and people start throwing hands, it’s a different movie.
The music is absolutely on point. It’s loud, cheesy ’90s energy from start to finish and it matches the tone perfectly. CGMagazine reckons the film has “one hell of a soundtrack”. The one fair nitpick, from AbsoluteGeeks, is that a movie set in 1993 drops in songs from 1994 and 2000. Do I care? Not even slightly.
Here’s the odd one. Raúl Juliá’s Bison in the 1994 film was the best thing about that mess: a pompous dictator chewing the scenery. Dastmalchian’s Bison is something else entirely. He’s a creepy weirdo with a thing for feet and pain, and yes, there’s sniffing. I kind of get it: they clearly didn’t want a Juliá tribute act, and making him unsettling is a choice. But Bison is supposed to be the scariest man in the room, and instead he’s mostly just gross.
Critics are split. CGMagazine thinks he’s “both menacing and insane in equal measure”. Inverse says he’s “unable to come across as intimidating or sinister”. ComicBookMovie also called out the foot-fetish bit, and AbsoluteGeeks says his master plan is as confusing as his outfit. Dastmalchian is a great actor and he commits to it 100%. I just don’t think it was the right call for Bison.
If you want a great film, this isn’t it. The script is daft, the jokes miss more than they hit, and the first hour needed a pair of scissors. But if you grew up in an arcade, it gets the important stuff right: the costumes, the moves, the music, and an Akuma who actually feels like the final boss. Cut 20 minutes from the front, add two more fights and give Bison his dignity back, and this would be an easy 8. As it is, it’s a fun one with your mates and a bag of lollies. Just don’t expect a masterpiece.
Seen it? Was Bison a bold new take or just weird? And who was your main back in the arcade days? Tell us in the comments or come argue about it on the GetRekt Discord.
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