Street Fighter

Street Fighter sets itself up as a sequel of sorts, with a well executed animated opening that shows Ryu winning 1987's World Warrior Tournament. That makes it contemporary to the first videogame, and its clear that CAPCOM have drawn lessons in logo design from Marvel, with scenes from their huge stable of titles running across the letters in the opening credits. These are near enough my only highlights from a film that represents a painful return to the usual quality of videogame adaptations. After Resident Evil and Iron Lung, Street Fighter is a hard reset.

The continuity of Street Fighter is complicated. The second game came out in 1991, the first live-action film was contemporary to an animated one, there have been some animated tv series, a 2008 movie centred on Chun-Li, there are countless videogames and versions thereof. I leave it to other scholars to explain the difference between any given iteration and EX plus Alpha. It's much easier to explain what's wrong with Street Fighter.

The secret is timing. Of comedy, of fighting games, of movie plotting. Although it has more than 20 bouts across a hair under two hours, it drags and lags like a stuck joystick or a damaged cable. There are countless characters, scattered motivations, comic relief for its comic relief, and little that would need to be relieved and even less that is so relieved. In truth the most compelling moment of delivery was that it was over. Even if it had been free I would not give it enough credit to want to have continued.

Nothing quite works. There's a soundtrack that, in what one feels is a second or third generation copy of Marvel movies and there imitators, relies as much on familiarity from its needledrops as any aptitude or accuracy. Set in 1993 much of it is notionally contemporary, though when Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson appears as the boxer Balrog his song Many Men it doesn't feel like something that's ten years in the future as much as something that's twenty-odd in the past. The presence of Peaches with a recent tune that harks back to Joan Jett would be a further anachronism if it were not for that earlier issue, timing.

As pace, there is a tournament structure which is short-cut and often abandoned. There are things that would be sub-plots if they appeared to be connected. At times it resembles less the mazes one gets on paper placemats for children's menus than the spaghetti sometimes spilled upon them. It's bright, vibrant in places, but seemingly without intent or direction. Kitao Sakurai has a huge amount of televison credits, including work with Eric Andre who appears as a public access fighting tournament show host in a way that wouldn't stretch credulity in a film with lightning monsters and stretchy-combatants if the jokes landed with even half the accuracy of the intercut punches. Co-writing with TJ Fixman who has penned plenty for another videogame series, Ratchet & Clank, as well as Taran Egerton airport thriller Carry-On, and Dalon Musson who slung ink for another multiple-credited franchise outpost in Captain America: Brave New World, and, further, Gary Dauberman of the Annabelle franchise and another console adaptation, Until Dawn.

That's a lot of keyboard action, and at times I was minded of a tactic for less artful players of such titles - button mashing. Fan service, and there's plenty, is at times described as the jangling of keys, but here they don't so much unlock fond memories as jam into ones pockets uncomfortably. Across a large cast there are some highlights, but it's not always clear how many of the ensemble were in the same places at the same time and even less clear if they were ever in agreement as to what kind of film they were in. David Dasmalchian manages at times to avoid trying to fill Raul Julia's cape as M Bison but for everyone else it's yesterday. Noah Centineo and Andrew Koji are doing their best, Callina Liang does her best trying to serve two goals, three if you count costuming decisions. Mel Jarnson's Cammy is a counterpoint to some iterations of Kylie Minogue, Jason Momoa has locked in a succession of buff and bearded roles but with ADR might have phoned this in. Cody Rhodes and Joe 'Roman Reigns' Anoa'i are among the latest to try the leap from professional wrestling to the silver screen and I think they've been let down here more than by any collapsing table or canvas floor.

Canvas is perhaps where there's the best explanation of what I think has gone wrong here. Not in an artistic sense. A good work will make itself felt almost despite its framing. More in the sense of the tent, as often Street Fighter appears to be aiming for camp and swerving it in case it becomes uncomfortable. That lack of connection includes with its audience, though were I still a teenage boy I think I'd still find this tedious. My fondness, such as it is, for the version with Jean Claude Van Damme isn't based on that being any good, but at least fun. This manages neither.

Reviewed on: 28 Oct 2026