Film Reviews:

Street Fighter II

aka Street Fighter II Movie Animated

(Gisaburo Sugii, Japan, 1994)

The anime version starts off with two major improvements on the live-action film: no Van Damme, and no Kylie Minogue. Sadly, despite some excellent action sequences, it falls into the same trap, because it's almost impossible to convert a game with so many characters into a movie. With each averaging ten minutes of screen time, there's no chance for significant development of personality or plot, and the whole thing vanishes up it's own joypad.

Just like the game, the film is at its best when two people are beating each other up, with the fight between Vega and Chun-Li one of the best pieces of animated martial arts I've seen. The soundtrack has been redubbed: whether you view this as an improvement depends on what you think of Alice in Chains... The TV series at least has more room to manoeuvre, plotwise. 6/10

Jim McLennan

See also:

Street Fighter (1994 - de Souza)

A-Z of Film Reviews