Street Fighter

No one would have blamed director Kitao Sakurai if he had decided to take possession of this film and formally title it ‘Kitao Sakurai’s Street Fighter’ to step it away from the other films and animes that have derived from Capcom’s original video game.

The plot is fairly simple with two fighters Ryu (Andrew Koji) and his adoptive brother Ken (Noah Centineo) becoming estranged after an incident at the first World Warrior tournament. Ryu won but under circumstances that made him a recluse from society and sent Ken off in the pursuit of fame and money with very mixed results.

For his own nefarious reasons M. Bison (David Dastmalchian) dictator of Shadaloo, helped by Chun Li (Callina Liang), decides to have a second contest inviting the best fighters in the world to compete. The main intention however is to draw out Ryu. Initially reluctant Ryu agrees when he learns what awaits the winner.

There are various wrangles and soul-searching between the brothers that sits well within the film. As do the other fighters and characters who while never deeply developed have enough background to prevent them from being just fodder to the cause.

Its moves at a fast pace with barely a slip with snappy dialogue to match courtesy of Sakurai’s and co-writer T.J. Fixman’s script. It’s never laugh out loud just silly smiley and chuckles giving a superficial sheen though there are deeper elements at play.

Stylistically the switches from anime and live action work thus anchoring the film to its routes along with some excellent fight sequences. What also drives the film is the excellent choice of music and the electronic score by Leo Birenberg and Zach Robinson.

If it does have a problem is that at times it is very busy with all (or a lot) of fighters bundling around the screen throwing each other around. It’s all great just that the necessarily fast editing tends to blur the whole thing and looks messy.

Street Fighter is out now in UK cinemas.