The Legend of Chun Li (2009)

I remember the summer of 1995. Barely 13, eagerly awaiting what was sure to be the movie release of the year. Nay, the decade. The very millennia, no doubt. I spent what I am sure were scant minutes begging to be taken to enjoy what was sure to be a visual delight, a spectacle of action fused with tragic story of slavery and exploitation.

I refer, of course, to Street Fighter, one of the most beloved games of my generation. And also, of course, the reality of the movie was very different to the romanticised imagining that fans of the franchise has hoped for. I'm sure that the late Raul Julia is rolling in his grave at the thought that this would be the last film he ever got to make, mourning the fact that he could have left it at Addams Family Values.

I never imagined for a minute that anyone would be stupid enough to do it all over again, yet in the Year of our Lord 2009 Andrzej Bartkowiak, cinematographer for academy award nominated pictures Prizzi's Honor, The Verdict and Terms of Endearment, decided to add to his less-than-stellar directorial portfolio with the universally panned Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li.

The film opens with a heartwarming monologue from 'star' Kristin Kreuk, about how Chunny had dreamt of becoming a concert pianist as a little girl, but instead decided to become a martial artist. Then her dad gets beaten up by the retarded guy from The Green Mile and kidnapped by the gay one from Star Trek: First Contact, and hilarity ensues as she dedicates her life to getting revenge. Oh, wait. Actually, she becomes a successful concert pianist. What a twist.

At some point, she gets something in the post, yadda yadda, NOW she's out for revenge.

What the film lacks in substance, it more than makes up for in bad scipting and poorly executed fight choreography, and one of the most impressively awful Irish accents in the industry, making Brad Pitt's turn in The Devil's Own frighteningly authentic by comparison.

In itself, the film is so fragmented and clunky that the story doesn't so much flow from scene to scene as much as each scene is thrown at high speed into a wood chipper and blended into something that contains the constituent parts you would expect of a movie, but it doesn't really resemble one except in the most vague of ways.

With an estimated budget of $50m, I can't quite work out where it went. I can only assume that the appallingly out-of-place scene where she learns how to do a D,DR,R + punch cost a fortune. At least they didn't use the word 'hadouken'. I think I might have thrown up in my mouth a little bit.

Still, it could be worse. The computer game format has never really transferred well to the big screen. As a concept, the stories are thin, the characters are rarely designed to be more than the player's avatar as they kick, punch, shoot or burst their way to victory, but the problem with this particular transition is this: Where a film pitch involves a thin premise which can eventually be fleshed out and expanded upon in much the same way that a computer game can be as you progress, a movie 'has to have' a definitive beginning, middle, end, antagonist, protagonist or any selection of these, but the game? It has more characters, they need to be massaged gently into the plot. Oh, and that particular enemy? Yeah, that needs to be crowbarred in, too. Ah, remember that monster? The one that killed EVERYONE the first time they played? Better wedge that into the mix, as well.

You can only fit so many books into a crate before you can't lift it for the weight, and there's a reason why movies generally have a handful of characters to deal with.