Street Fighter embraces its old-school roots and mostly lands the knockout

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Round one! Fight! In Street Fighter, writer-director Kitao Sakurai once more brings to screen Capcom’s long-running historic fighting game series with wild ...

Round one! Fight! In Street Fighter, writer-director Kitao Sakurai once more brings to screen Capcom’s long-running historic fighting game series with wild abandon.

When it comes to unapologetic video game film adaptations that embrace the silly goofball nature of their source material for a fun time, Paul WS Anderson’s 1995 take on Mortal Kombat has been the champion for many years. But here comes a new challenger!In Street Fighter, writer-director Kitao Sakurai brings to screen Capcom’s long-running historic fighting game series with wild abandon. It is by no means “Perfect!”, with many a misstep, but its reckless and relentless “button-mashing” energy sure is infectious.

This may look like an adaptation of the Street Fighter video game (or more specifically 1991’s genre-defining Street Fighter II: The World Warrior), but it actually draws most of its inspiration in story and tone from 1994 anime feature film Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, 2005 anime feature film Street Fighter Alpha: Generations, and the 1995 Street Fighter live-action movie.The anime inspirations are very obvious from the get-go as Sakurai’s film opens up with an incredible hand-drawn animated sequence.

To accomplish this, Ryu was forced to tap into a vast power – the Dark Hadou – much to the concern of his master Gouken (Don Lee) and adoptive brother/fellow student Ken Masters (Noah Centineo). This power – and the demonic presence drawn to it – scares Ryu to the point that he disappears from the world to live, instead, a life of quiet anonymity.Fast forward to 1993, Ken is now a global superstar, but more for his product endorsements and celeb party boy antics than for any real combat accolades.

Eight of the best martial artists in the world have been invited and Ken is finally one of them after not being picked for the first tournament.Secretly, however, this is all an elaborate ploy by Bison to place Ken in danger and lure Ryu out of hiding so that he can claim the Dark Hadou to charge…

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