old.cbuzz.co.uk cBuzz Films - Street Fighter

Street Fighter

Certificate 12

running time 1hr 40 mins

Director Steven E. De Souza

Well, you've played the computer game throughout your teenage years and now here's the film in much the same format. The same format, that is, except for the addition of Jean Claude Van Damme (Time Cop, Kick Boxer), the late Raul Julia (The Addams Family, Presumed Innocent) and, of course, Kylie Minogue.

The film follows the computer game idea and has a constant and sometimes overpowering soundtrack and, as is to be expected, the odd streetfight between all of your favourite characters.

The plot is simple M. Bison (Julia) is an evil psychopath who wants to take over the world and Guile (Van Damme) is the Colonel of the AN (Allied Nations - not United Nations - despite the same pale blue caps) whose mission is to free the 63 hostages Bison has taken prisoner in order to earn $20 billion in ransom demands. Simple.

Guile's efforts are aided by an annoyingly overacted reporter, Chun LI (Ming Na - Wen) and her news crew who are (surprise, surprise) all Street Fighter computer game characters with their own personal grudge against Bison.

Slowly but surely, all of the Street Fighter computer characters appear on screen and begin to, well, have street fights. The film is badly made, it is badly edited and the dialogue and sound effects are so badly combined that much of the film is difficult to hear.

This, you might think, would make the essence of Street Fighter hard to follow, but this problem does not arise as the film is so predictable, you know exactly what is going to happen from the first minute of the movie.

The film offers all the sanitized hallmarks of the computer game - bloodless violence and murder as well as some dodgy stereotypes of American xenophobia and dominance. However, it is going to be an enormous success and kids everywhere will lap this up over the half term holidays. If it wasn't so badly made and acted it would be astoundingly good fun, instead it merely is good fun.

The soundtrack features Ice Cube, LL Cool J and Public Enemy, so this should be a huge hit too. Watch out for that last bit of advertising in the incredibly corny final shot and the stunning resemblance Bison's control room has to an arcade machine. Implicit advertising ?- Never! (DJW)