Street Fighter: Movie Review

Cast: Noah Centino, Andrew Koji, Joe Anoa'i, David Dastmalchian, Calliana Liang, Orville Peck, 50 Cent, Jason Momoa, Eric Andre
Director: Kitao Sakurai

In a fight, there are always two opposing sides, trying to duke it out and overcome the other.

In many ways, that's exactly how the story (thin as it is) and the tone of the new 2026 Street Fighter movie are represented - constantly at odds with each other, and never quite landing the killer blow.

Set in 1993, giving the film a chance to embrace the slightly camp, slightly camera-leery approach of the era, Street Fighter follows Koji's Ryu and Centino's himbo Ken, a pair of fighters who trained under the same master, became brothers, but then grew estranged.

Lured back to fight one last time in a grand tournament organised by Bison (Dastmalchian, hamming it up at every moment) to discover who the ultimate fighter is, Ken and Ryu find themselves both needing to put aside their differences and to rediscover what it was that made them a formidable combo.

Throw in a side-plot about an Interpol agent (Liang) who's after revenge on Bison for killing her father and the possibility of a series of fight scenes, Street Fighter should be strong enough to deliver a KO.

Unfortunately, even with some incredibly well animated scenes that are scattered throughout and which stretch to cover the entire IMAX screen, Street Fighter somehow misses the mark, delivering a juvenile film that seems to have edited out its tournament fight sequences and after two hours, is no closer to delivering a final blow, preferring instead to tease a future sequel that may not happen.

It's not without its pleasures though.

Whether it's the extremely impressive fight sequences that are splashed throughout (when they're not edited or AWOL) or the occasional bursts of humour that embrace the dumb nature of what's occurring, Street Fighter proves worthy of its mantle and its ambition. And Momoa delivers his most fun role in a long time, finally embracing the macho levels of his persona and the inherent silliness of his premise.

But even the fan service to the game can't escape the need to down 3 or 4 beers before watching this. The tone severely grates after an hour, and the thinness and confusion of what's happening starts to take its toll.

It's amazing that even with a stuffed cast, the Street Fighter movie manages to be both over-stuffed and yet underdone. It's not even a technical victory and while it never lands a killer blow, the possibility there's more to come is enough to make even the most hardened action movie fan want to tap out.