Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-€“Li is the type of bad movie I occasionally find myself 
getting behind. In the opening flashback sequence a
 young Chun-€“Li watches in horror as her honest father is beaten 
and kidnapped by sinister businessman Neal McDonough and his 
henchman, Michael Clarke Duncan - two dudes you would never want to see breaking through your window. The fight between Duncan and Edmund Chen is filled with so many goofy, computer-€“aided stunts that it feels like the solemn, self-serious version of Kung Fu Hustle. Based on the popular video game series, The Legend of Chun-Li is a pretty horrible movie, but makes for an interesting double-bill with the original Street Fighter film from 1994. Much has changed in 15 years. The earlier Jean-Claude Van Damme film was a descendant of the muscle-headed action movies of the '80s, heavy on militarism, rah-rah American patriotism, and xenophobia (Raul Julia as European maniac Bison; Simon Callow as a weak-kneed British general; Van Damme as the ultimate symbol of the melting pot). Asian characters were pushed off to the sidelines. The Legend of Chun-€“Li, a post-Crouching Tiger action movie, actually emphasizes the source material's Asian-ness and half-heartedly knocks American imperialism (Bison is now played by McDonough as a slimy American), but it has the 
laughable air of having been cooked up by an American 
screenwriter whose only knowledge of Asian culture comes from video games and Jet Li's American movies. Set in Thailand with 
Japanese characters, training sequences straight out of a Hong
Kong kung fu movie and pseudo-€“mysticism straight out of a '90s 
arcade game, the film feels less like a depiction of Chinese, Japanese, or Thai culture than an incoherent mash-up of the best 
bits of all three. Come to think of it, The Legend of Chun-€“Li is
just as big a proponent of the melting pot as the 1994 film. The DVD contains deleted scenes, making-of documentaries, commentary, and both theatrical and unrated cuts of the film.