‘Street Fighter : The Legend of Chun Li’ (2009) Movie Review
In “Street Fighter : The Legend of Chun Li” , Chun Li (Kristin Kreuk) grows up with her father and mother in Japan. Her Father teaches her how to play the piano and also how to fight,and they grow a close relationship. Her father is a well established businessman, and she lives a very nice wealthy life in Japan. However, one day evil businessman, Bison (Neal McDonough) breaks into her home. Her father fights back quite well against Balrog (Michael Clarke Duncan), one of Bison’s main lackeys, but at last is forced to go with Bison in order to keep Chun Li from being harmed. Bison kidnapped her father so that he could use his business contacts to fuel his own corrupt business plans.
Then we fast forward years later. Now Chun Li is all grown up, and is a great concert pianist. One day she gets a scroll with a message she cannot understand which eventually leads her to leave her good life in Japan to go to the slums of Bangkok to search for a man named Gen (Robin Shou). She searches to find him for a while,but at last it is he who finds her after she gets in a fight with some street thugs, but then collapses afterwards do to her weaken state of being in the slums of Bangkok without much food. Gen nurses her back to health, and reveals to her what her real mission is for being in Bangkok. He proceeds to tell her about Bison’s past,how he was always pretty much evil, and his present plans to take over the slums of Bangkok to build pretty houses at the people of Bangkok’s expense.
She resists Gen’s help at first, but once he reveals her weaknesses to her, she realizes that she is not yet ready to take on Bison yet. She allows him to teach her how to fight even better,and how to control her anger. He also shows her how to do the “Kikoken” blast. Bison is on to Chun Li’s plans to interfere in his plans so he is finally able to capture her. Bison allows her to see her father one last time and say goodbye. Bison, then killed her father right in front of her. Bison leaves the room ,and orders his men to kill her while she is all tied up and hanging upside down,but she deploys some fancy moves that begin with a headbutt, and impressively escapes. After some gun shoot outs,being chased,and shot in the side while pushing a little boy out of the way of gunfire, she finds Gen, again who she thought had been killed when Bison’s men blew up the house he lived in, but he somehow escaped.
With the help of Gen,and interpol agents Charlie Nash (Chris Klein) and Maya Sunee (Moon Bloodgood) who had also been following the Bison case , Chun Li sets up a plan to intercept Bison as he tries to pick up a shipment which is actually his daughter,and the only one he cares for. What goes down in the finale, is a whole bunch of gun shots,great fight scenes,and chasing. Then we see Gen fighting with Bison,but then Gen gets hurt. Just when Bison is about to try and finish him off, Chun Li flips onto the scene beating the crap out of him in great fight scene which ends with her hitting him with the “Kikoken” blast and makes him fall off a really tall building,and if that wasn’t enough, she jumps down on to him and twists head making it do a 360 ensuring that the job is done. She stops his evil plans of taking over the slums, and gets revenge for her father. They do leave it open for a sequel at the end when Gen tells her about a “Street Fighting ” tournament which she doesn’t fully reject, but does at the moment.
My Take : I thought this movie had some awesome fight scenes especially in one of them where she does an upside down spinning kick,knocking the guns out the hands of all the men. It was great. I thought the story and build up was told well,and Kristin Kreuk is amazing. I think I have crush,lol!!! I like anything Kristin is in. I thought she played the role really well. I would love for them to do a sequel to this movie where she’s in the street fighting tournaments as this was truly more of an introduction to her character. Even with that said, it did have enough great fight scenes to suffice. As for originality, hmmm not so much. It’s the old tale of revenge and justice,but I do like the way it was told especially with Kristin as the lead. I just got a sense that she was made for this role while watching.
Grade : B +
Movie : Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
Release Date : February 27,2009
Studio : 20th Century Fox
Cast : Kristin Kreuk, Michael Clarke Duncan, Neal McDonough, Taboo, Chris Klein, Moon Bloodgood, Edmund Chen, Cheng Pei Pei, Josie Ho, Robin Shou
