Street Fighter

Overall VD Rating: 4

Jess is irate with this movie. Kate was falling asleep. Overall it was the sort of failure that legends are made from--even the outtakes were boring. That was the biggest problem with this film; it was boring. Not as bad as Universal Soldier: The Return or even Desert Heat it was neither awful enough to laugh at or cheesy enough to enjoy. This movie was simply boring and lame.

JCVD Exposure: 3

This was an ensemble cast and like a picture of high school reunion there was no opportunity to zoom in on any one person. JCVD was hot enough when he was on screen; he was only on screen approximately thirty out of the one hundred minutes. Emotive opportunities were nill; at one point JCVD had a death scene, but even that was curiously lame.

This is the first JCVD movie to suffer from too much plot.

JCVD Boot to Face Action: 3

The last forty minutes of the movie are kind of action oriented, but not really. Only the last fifteen minutes or so really pick up. The first hour is a bit like an exercise in hypnosis. How does a video game based entirely on fighting--FIGHTING--become a movie with so much plot even Stanley Kubrick would call for edits.

The Effect of Supporting Roles on JCVD’s Awesomeness: 6

This category is all about Raul Julia and his CRAZY eyes. There was a surprise visit by Kylie Minogue as Cami and the actor playing Ryu was refreshingly attractive. Again, it wasn’t that any aspect was bad, but that there was simply too much and not enough of what was great. You jump back and forth between the characters so fast and so often that you find yourself hoping someone will die just to whittle the cast down.

And let’s talk about Blanca. Blanca in the video game was a animal-man who grew up in the jungles of Brazil and was green with orange hair and electrocuted people cause that’s what happens when you grow up in the jungles of Brazil. In this movie he became the Incredible Hulk circa 1976 and we were all supposed to feel really bad about his monstrousness. BORING. We want us a jungle man who learned to electrocute from the eels!

This movie just begs the question: at what point did someone say “this is a good idea”? How did this happen? It’s like a fanny pack over spandex--it never has its year.

And--you can’t say “halt” in English with slightly Thai-esque font and expect it to pass for Thai. We’re just saying.