Street Fighter Movie Review:
A lot of interesting ideas are floating inside Street Fighter (2026), but what good are ideas when a film with “fight” in its title has unmemorable action scenes? The film offers everything you would expect from a martial arts comedy. And all the favourite names from when arcade games ruled the streets are back. The level of goofiness is perfect and, thankfully, never bothered by the supposed need to make the characters look and sound realistic. Perhaps the biggest positive creative decision in Street Fighter is the choice to show the flashback sequences in 2D animation. Interestingly, the anime sequences (inarguably the best part of the film) handle the emotionally intense scenes, while the live-action scenes are goofy.
Director: Kitao Sakurai
Cast: Noah Centineo, Andrew Koji, Callina Liang, Vidyut Jammwal, David Dastmalchian, Roman Reigns, Cody Rhodes
Street Fighter follows Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken (Noah Centineo), who grew up like brothers under a martial arts teacher but are now estranged. Meanwhile, the evil Lord Bison (David Dastmalchian) is resurrecting a legendary tournament to draw out Ryu so he can harness a dark psychic power. The film constantly pushes how far it can go in unserious territory. The energy Lord Bison wants to extract is bluntly titled “psycho power” and there is of course a machine with a dial to show psycho power levels. That’s one example of Street Fighter’s absurdist tone. There are no overt attempts to point out how funny everything is, and nobody is shouting their punch lines at you. Plenty of catchphrases are thrown around, however. The humour in the film is a refreshing change of pace from recent action comedies. But if this isn’t your type of humour then there is little else to look forward to.
For its specific sub-genre, live-action video game adaptation with a huge ensemble and plenty of action and comedy, Street Fighter commits the cardinal sin of delivering unremarkable action sequences. Except for the sauna fight between Ryu and Honda and the amazing anime sequences, the fights show very little creativity in their choreography. Some fights were poorly lit, as well. As for the story, the structure followed a typical passable template of a hero’s journey towards redemption. And even if you ignore Lord Bison's bland villainy, many of the writing choices felt like a direct result of ‘button-smashing’.
The film confidently sets up a sequel, but the lead-up arrives so abruptly that the resolution feels rushed, and the big climactic action scenes are so severely undercooked it feels like the writers ran out of subscriptions to whatever AI they were using. Street Fighter is frustrating because you can see how it shows flashes of creativity that do not warrant a tired old “AI joke” like the one above. The imaginary world of MetroLao looks fascinatingly chaotic. Every fighter is wonderfully designed and is brimming with so much lore. But the screenplay is still plagued by a lack of focus. Any and all disappointment with the film’s shortcomings is a direct result of how much you enjoyed the world-building, the humour, the likeable characters, and how it has fun with itself. Street Fighter’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness are one and the same: it doesn’t take itself too seriously.
