STREET FIGHTER Review: The Anime Kicks Ass, the Live Action Kicks Itself, and I'm Caught in the Middle

I grew up in the '90s, spending countless hours in arcades playing Street Fighter, throwing Hadoukens, getting my ass kicked, and loving every second of it.

So, naturally, I have a soft spot for this franchise, even when Hollywood does ridiculous things with it. Hell, I still remember seeing the 1994 Street Fighter movie as a young teen and absolutely loving that gloriously stupid piece of cinema.

Is it a terrible movie? Absolutely! Do I still love it? You bet your ass I do! Raul Julia gave us an insanely entertaining M. Bison, while Jean-Claude Van Damme did whatever the hell Jean-Claude Van Damme was doing as Guile.

It was a ridiculous movie, but it had a certain goofy charm that has stuck with me all these years. So when I heard director Kitao Sakurai was taking another swing at adapting the legendary Capcom fighting game, I was excited!

The trailers promised an outrageous, action-packed, nostalgia-fueled spectacle, and that's exactly what I wanted. I wasn't walking into this thing expecting cinematic greatness. I just wanted to have a ridiculously fun time watching these video game characters beat the living hell out of each other. That shouldn't be too much to ask, right?

Well, here's where things get weird. The new Street Fighter is pretty much exactly the movie I expected it to be. It's loud, absurd, completely unhinged, and fueled by the kind of gloriously stupid video game insanity that could only come from a room full of filmmakers button-mashing their way through the creative process!

And you know what? I actually had fun with it! There are some genuinely entertaining moments, some wonderfully ridiculous creative choices, and an infectious energy that I couldn't help but appreciate.

Sakurai clearly wanted to make something that embraces the absolute madness of the Street Fighter universe, and he certainly committed to that idea. But here's the frustrating part. Despite getting almost exactly what I thought I wanted, I walked out feeling strangely deflated.

I wasn't angry at the movie. I didn't hate it. I wasn't even bored! I just couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing. It's a bizarre experience to watch a movie that delivers on your expectations and somehow still leaves you disappointed. How the hell does that happen?!

I think I figured out what bothered me, and it has everything to do with one of the coolest things the movie does. There's an animated anime-style storyline woven throughout the film that explores the history and complicated relationship between Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken (Noah Centineo), and this stuff is awesome!

These animated sequences were easily my favorite part of the entire movie. The storytelling and writting are stronger, the characters are more interesting, the emotional stakes actually land, and the action looks freaking incredible! There's something about seeing these characters brought to life through anime that just feels right.

Their fighting styles, their exaggerated abilities, their personalities, and the intensity of their rivalry all come together beautifully in this format. I found myself getting invested in their story in a way that the live-action portions never quite managed to accomplish.

When the movie jumps back into live action, it's like somebody changed the channel to an entirely different film. Suddenly, the characters I'd just been invested in feel like completely different people. The emotional weight of the anime sequences gets tossed aside in favor of outrageous comedy, cartoonish performances, and increasingly ridiculous situations.

It's almost impressive how dramatically the tone shifts. Koji and Centineo do their best to ground Ryu and Ken in something resembling genuine human emotion, but they're surrounded by a circus of characters who seem to have wandered in from a completely different universe.

David Dastmalchian goes wonderfully weird as M. Bison, Callina Liang brings Chun-Li into the action, Cody Rhodes sports Guile's magnificently absurd haircut, and Orville Peck shows up as Vega looking like he was genetically engineered specifically for this movie.

The cast is clearly having a blast, and I genuinely appreciate how much the filmmakers embraced the exaggerated character designs from the games. But it's hard to take the emotional stakes seriously when the movie keeps jumping from a genuinely compelling anime drama to what looks like a Saturday morning cartoon that somehow got approved for a ridiculous Hollywood budget.

And then there are the fights! Look, when you're making a Street Fighter movie, the action needs to kick some serious ass. That's the whole damn point! To the film's credit, there are some really cool fight sequences here, and I loved seeing the filmmakers attempt to recreate the characters' signature fighting styles and moves from the games.

There's something inherently entertaining about watching these ridiculous attacks translated into live action, especially when you've spent years performing them with an arcade joystick. The problem is that some of these fights look downright strange.

What looks spectacular and completely natural in animation can look awkward as hell when actual human beings attempt to pull it off. The movements, visual effects, and exaggerated physicality don't always come together as smoothly as they should.

Sometimes it works, but other times, I was sitting there thinking, what the hell am I looking at?! It's part of the movie's charm, I suppose, but it also reinforces how much better this material seems to work in animation. The anime sequences make these fighters look like absolute badasses. In live action, they occasionally look like a bunch of dudes recreating Street Fighter II moves in their backyard after one too many energy drinks."

One thing I loved, though, was the movie's unapologetic embrace of '90s nostalgia. Sakurai throws himself into that era with an enthusiasm I can absolutely get behind, even if the movie plays fast and loose with its own timeline. It feels like somebody dumped an entire decade of pop culture into a blender and cranked that sucker up to maximum speed.

And can we talk about this movie's completely bonkers interpretation of the '90s for a second? Because apparently, the filmmakers decided that historical accuracy could take a flying roundhouse kick to the face.

The movie opens in 1987 with Ryu listening to 4 Non Blondes' "What's Up?" on his Walkman, which is a pretty impressive accomplishment considering the song wouldn't be released until 1993. Then, when the story jumps ahead to 1993, Ken's manager starts talking about Taco Bell naming a Gordita after him. There's just one tiny problem. Taco Bell didn't introduce the Gordita until 1998!

It's like the filmmakers grabbed everything they could remember about the '90s, tossed it into a blender, and said, "Screw it, close enough!" And you know what? As ridiculous as these little details are, I almost have to admire the complete disregard for the space-time continuum.

As someone who grew up playing Street Fighter II in arcades, there's something wonderfully entertaining about seeing this world recreated with such ridiculous affection. I appreciated the costumes, the characters, the references, and the filmmakers' obvious desire to deliver something fans of the games could recognize and enjoy.

The movie isn't particularly concerned with realism, subtlety, or occasionally even basic logic, and I can respect that. In fact, some of its most entertaining moments come from just how enthusiastically it embraces its own stupidity. But that nostalgia can only carry a movie so far.

I wanted to get completely swept up in this insanity, and every time I started having a great time, something would happen that pulled me right back out of it. It's frustrating because I could see the potential for something genuinely fantastic hiding underneath all the craziness.

What makes this whole experience so interesting to me is that Street Fighter almost feels like two different adaptations competing for control of the same movie. One is a visually cool anime action drama that takes its characters seriously and delivers the kind of storytelling that could make this franchise really shine on the big screen.

The other is an outrageous live-action comedy that treats the entire Street Fighter universe like one giant playground where absolutely anything goes. And here's the thing: I actually like both of those approaches! I love ridiculous movies. I love over-the-top action. I love filmmakers who aren't afraid to get weird and make something completely insane.

But I'm not convinced these two particular approaches belong together in the way they're presented here. Sakurai swings for the fences with practically every creative decision, and while I admire that enthusiasm, the movie ends up fighting against itself.

The animated portions showed me just how awesome a more focused Street Fighter adaptation could be, and that realization made the shortcomings of the live-action material harder to overlook. Had the entire movie maintained the style, tone, and emotional intensity of those anime sequences, I honestly think we could've gotten something special. Instead, I found myself wishing I could watch the animated version of a movie I was already watching. That's a pretty strange predicament to be in!

So, where does that leave me with Street Fighter? Well, despite all my complaining, I still enjoyed the damn thing! I really did! It's a wildly entertaining mess with some genuinely cool ideas, a handful of awesome action moments, and enough nostalgia to make an old-school arcade junkie like me smile.

I can absolutely understand why critics might tear this movie apart, because there are plenty of things here that simply don't work. But I also think there's an audience that's going to eat this ridiculous thing up, and I wouldn't be surprised if it eventually developed the same kind of cult following as the 1994 film.

Maybe that's the destiny of every live-action Street Fighter adaptation: to be completely ridiculous, get beaten to a pulp by critics, and somehow find its way into the hearts of video game fans anyway. I wanted to love this movie more than I actually did, and that's probably my biggest disappointment.

I got the stupid, crazy, action-packed Street Fighter movie I expected, but after seeing glimpses of how genuinely great it could've been, I couldn't help wanting something more. Still, I'd absolutely encourage fellow Street Fighter fans to give it a shot. You might have a much better time with it than I did. And who knows? Maybe you'll walk out thinking it's the greatest piece of ridiculous video game entertainment you've ever seen. Me?

I had fun, I laughed, I enjoyed the insanity, and I walked away wishing the entire movie had been animated. I guess you could say Street Fighter landed some pretty entertaining punches, but it never quite delivered that knockout blow I was hoping for.