The Red and Black

Issue date: 3/5/09 Section: Out & About

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I will go on the record by saying "Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li" was thoroughly enjoyable.

With laughable acting and embarrassingly trite screenwriting, this film (based on CapCom's video game) plays like "Snakes on a Plane" meets "Kung Pow: Enter the Fist."

And like a Lifetime movie, it's hilarious because no one intended it to be funny at all. Kristin Kreuk ("Smallville") plays title character Chun-Li, a concert pianist and part-time kung-fu fighter who abandons her career in search for her father, long ago abducted by a crime lord named Bison (Neal McDonough).



Using Chun-Li's father for his business connections, Bison plots to raze the slums of Bangkok and displace all its inhabitants. Captain Planet couldn't ask for a better two-dimensional villain.

An ancient Chinese scroll and a series of people with web tattoos direct Chun-Li to (where else?) Bangkok. There, she joins up with martial arts master Gen (Robin Shou) and undergoes Mr. Miyagi-style training in order to prepare herself for a showdown with Bison. Also hot on Bison's trail is Interpol officer Nash (Chris Klein) and Thai detective Maya (Moon Bloodgood), whose wardrobe consists solely of cleavage-baring tank tops.

The two serve merely to inject some unconvincing sexual tension and possibly the worst acting I've ever seen in a mainstream release. Expertly channeling Keanu Reeves from his "Speed" days, Klein huskily sneers every line while managing to be wooden at the same time.

And just when you think you can't handle any more ridiculousness, we are treated an unbearably awkward lesbian dance-off between Kreuk and one of Bison's henchwoman, Cantana (Josie Ho). I repeat: a lesbian dance-off and then a fight scene which ends in Kreuk doing an upside down spin kick via badly done CGI.

Directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak, the man behind other action gems such as "Romeo Must Die" and "Doom," and written by Justin Marks, a man of no reputable works to date, it goes without saying that this film was going to be sub-par.

But to reach the point where a film is so bad, so ludicrous that it transcends into this realm of awesomely bad - that, my dear reader, takes certain finesse. And I, for one, am still laughing.

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