Trailer for ‘Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li’

Update: The U.S. trailer for STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI has been added alongside the previously published Japanese version. It’s basically the same footage but with an English voice-over. The film opens in theaters February 27th.

A Japanese trailer for the second, upcoming screen adaptation of Capcom’s STREET FIGHTER video game series has surfaced online. It feature’s SMALLVILLE’s Kristin Kreuk in the title role of a female fighter, sans her distinctive blue costume, fighting for justice, etc.

From this trailer, the film looks to be missing much of the source material’s visual flavor. After the disastrous response to Capcom’s 1994 STREET FIGHTER movie, which almost killed Jean-Claude Van Damme’s career, the understated production design was no doubt intentional. Granted, this trailer is aimed at the Japanese market but I still don’t see a single hook to entice either fans of the game or the general action movie crowd. The ample wirework and limited CGI looks especially routine and tiresome. The cast and story also seem to be consciously buried in the whirl of fast-paced imagery and mediocre fighting moves.

For an action movie based on a popular fighting video game series, STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI is remarkably light on screen-fighting talent. According to her online biography on IMDb.com, Kreuk has a background in gymnastics and martial arts which includes a purple belt in karate. This is her first major action role.

Michael Clarke Duncan and Neal McDonough are solid actors but have relatively limited screen-fighting experience. Duncan, a former celebrity bodyguard, has put his sizable weight behind fighting moves in THE SCORPION KING and DAREDEVIL.

Some of the other co-stars have better fight credentials but most of them are noticeably absent from this trailer. MORTAL KOMBAT star Robin Shou is briefly shown. He seems to have made a second career out of getting guest-starring roles in video game movies after his cameo appearance in Coreu Yuen’s DOA: DEAD OR ALIVE.

Josie Ho, who trained under Donnie Yen for THE TWINS EFFECT is also in the movie, as is wuxia screen legend Cheng Pei-pei, best known for her roles in COME DRINK WITH ME (1966) and CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (2000). Personally, I wish Cheng had stopped with Ang Lee’s film. There is no topping that for a career comeback and virtually everything she has been in since has been little more than an embarrassment.

The film’s director is the Polish-born Andrzej Bartkowiak who can count Jet Li vehicles ROMEO MUST DIE and CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE, as well as Steven Seagal’s EXIT WOUNDS among his credits. That’s not a list to instill confidence among expectant genre fans but one can hope that a few lessons have been learned from the experience.

Hong Kong veteran Dion Lam, who worked with Bartkowiak on three of his previous films, choreographed the fight sequences with assistance from Jonathan Eusebio (NEVER BACK DOWN, DRAGONBALL EVOLUTION). Lam cut his teeth in Hong Kong as a stuntman, stunt actor and action director during the territory’s ’90s-era boom. He was one of the first HK action directors to move to Hollywood in the late ’90s when he joined Sammo Hung on the set of the MARTIAL LAW series. He’s been busy working on blockbuster titles on both sides of the Pacific ever since. Like many of his peers, Lam favors wirework. With the obvious fantasy elements in this film, hopefully he has managed to steer clear of the unacceptable imbalance between exaggerated movement and realism that hindered his past fight work in Hollywood films.

20th Century Fox is rolling out STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI in theaters on February 27th. The film is one of several fighting video game-to-movie adaptations coming our way. Also in the works are TEKKEN (2009), KING OF FIGHTERS (2010) and a new MORTAL KOMBAT (2010). Other relevant video game adaptations we can expect to see in feature film form include ONIMUSHA, PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME and presumably Paul Anderson’s CASTLEVANIA which should come with plenty of hopping, creature-killing whip action if the game series is any indication.

Tags: Dion Lam, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009), upcoming, video game, Videos