Just like the Street Fighter movie of the 90s, it’s been quite a while since someone has tried to bring the video game back to the big screen. We had Mortal Kombat II earlier this year (which led to quite the rivalry between the two casts), which made the more absurd and video game-like features come to life. Street Fighter is a different kind of game and this new adaptation certainly brings along some absurdities with it.
The film follows Ken (Noah Centineo) and Ryu (Andrew Koji). They are two adopted brothers by their master Gouken (Don Lee) and raised to fight. There are anime-style scenes that intersperse throughout the film that give us some backstory on the characters. Ryu is the World Champion after fighting in a tournament that Ken really wanted to fight in as well. A new tournament is started by M. Bison (David Dastmalchian) who really wants to absorb all of Ryu’s powers. After Gouken is killed at the hands of Akuma (Roman Reigns), Ryu disappears, leaving Ken to his own devices and his manager, Dan (Andrew Schulz).
From there, Chun-Li (Callina Liang), an undercover Interpol agent, working to stop Bison, brings the fighters together for the new tournament. Joining the tournament are Ryu, Ken, Guile (Cody Rhodes), Balrog (50 Cent), Vega (Orville Peck), Dhalsim (Vidyut Jammwal), and Zangief (Olivier Richters). Also on M. Bison’s side is Cammy (Mel Jarnson) and the announcer Don Sauvage (Eric Andre). Oh and Jason Momoa plays Blanka.
If that’s a lot to follow, it’s because it is.
But this is a Street Fighter movie after all. We’ve gotta get those fighters in.
Some Confusing Bits Of The Story
Noah Centineo is fantastic as Ken, he understands the assignment. Really, everyone in the cast understands what the movie is about. This isn’t supposed to be serious affair, its a Street Fighter movie. That does mean that when the emotion is turned on a bit during the film it feels a bit like a soap opera, but I’ll take that. Centineo is part of a lot of the hilarity in the film, but really, Cody Rhodes is the funniest performance. His turn as Guile is full-bore, 100% into the absurd, and the WWE Superstar understands it. Out of the many characters in the film, the three really “main” ones are Ken, Ryu, and Chun-Li. Chun-Li also gets the least amount on her motivations and backstory, with a very, VERY quick anime cutscene that tells us that M. Bison killed her father some years ago.
The structure of the hierarchy of villains in the film is also somewhat confusing. Akuma is talked up as this big bad the entire time, but you only see him in the anime sequences up until the end of the tournament. That is kind of like the video games where he’s the “final boss” but M. Bison is also the main villain of the film. His henchmen are also a confusing hierarchy with Vega, Cammy, Balrog, and Zangief “working” for him but some of them not really, they just want to kick the other people’s asses?
It leads to some thrilling action sequences that’ll make the 12-year-old in you go crazy, though.
If you’re going into Street Fighter for some scenes that look like they’re stripped straight from the games, you’re in luck. Kitao Sakurai has some action on his filmography with his work on Twisted Metal, but this movie is a whole new beast. Luckily, these sequences are all pretty nice with some nifty camera work and slow-motion that all add to the fights. Every fight feels like one from the games, with the exception of the fight with Blanka and Ryu. I just could not really get invested with how Blanka looks. it just looks like painted green CGI Jason Momoa. It took me right out of the movie for the scenes that he was in. Luckily, he comes and goes pretty quickly and it’s back to the other characters fighting.
The music in the film is a wonderful choice but it does break the rules a bit because the movie is set in 1993 and has music from after that year. Its a small thing, but for a movie that prides itself on feeling like a throwback, it took me out hearing “Who Let The Dogs Out” as Ken’s entrance music. There are some certified bangers in the soundtrack though, if you can get over that. I was bobbing along in the theater to “Good Vibrations” by Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch.
The other part of the film that feels a bit off is the editing and pacing. The edits are strangely done outside of the fight scenes with tricks that I can see where they were going for, but the cuts don’t work as well. Characters also seem to flow in and out of the story at random. Guile and Dhalsim just kind of disappear after helping everyone and then come back later with no rhyme or reason. With a movie that has this many characters, it makes sense that some would get more attention than others, but it breaks a bit of logic when you remember back to the beginning of the film, when there were clear battle lines drawn of good and bad.
So all of this sounds like Street Fighter would be a mess of a movie, and you’d be right. It is a mess. It’s a fun, entertaining, popcorn mess of a film. The action is hard-hitting and tight-fitting. It knows exactly what it’s going for and goes right into that with 90s cheese. Even with some issues of characters jumping in and out, strange motivations, and editing that’s a bit wonky, Street Fighter is really entertaining. Fans of the video games will get all the easter eggs and then some. It delivers on a corny video game adaptation of a corny video game series.
That’s really all we can ask for. In the year 2026, we’ve now got two solid fighting video game adaptations.
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