So I wanted to watch this last Christmas, but I couldn't finish it until recently.

So I've described this film many times as a "Dark Carnival Funhouse Mirror Version of Street Fighter". It kinda... Resembles(?) Street Fighter; but it's obvious that things are warped and distorted in a way that makes them unrecognizable. It's like how familiar images would look in a fever dream after chugging cough syrup. It's Street Fighter... But not in any way that matters. And Frankly... That's kinda why I love it so much. It's a definitive "So Bad it's Good" movie. It's a poorly acted and poorly written film with a nonsensical plot and no care for the original story; but it's still an enthralling adventure with call-backs and homages that catch me off-guard. One of the early changes: Guile's friend Charlie is taken by Shadaloo. Not the in-game friend Charlie Nash, but a fusion of identities: Carlos "Charlie" Blanka. It's such a peculiar change that legitimately made me laugh out loud at the absurdity of it. Things like that are what make the film so amusing; it corrupts a series you love, perverting it until it's nothing but a shitty 90s Action Film. It's SO good.

Ryu and Ken being unusually competent con-men is fun, Chun-Li being an independent spy and not an interpol agent is fun, Hawaiian E-Honda is a fascinating route to take the character, Heroic Balrog was not on my bingo card but was quite fun, Dee Jay being a villain and the straight-man to other characters was confusing but did get a rise outta me; nearly every character change (sans Sagat) was very fun. But the cake-taker was Raul Julia as M. Bison. He just eats up whatever scene he's in, his performance is SO good.

The only problem is that it kinda flounders around the ending. Very early on you kinda knew this was gonna be "The Guile Movie", but the end REALLY bumps that up to eleven. While the named characters each get one-on-one fights that are quite enjoyable, there is an overarching battle between Guile's Underlings and Shadaloo Footsoldiers; and that part just took me out of it. That's when the film felt a lot less like a Street Fighter movie and more like a GI Joe movie (which apparently was the plan early on? I dunno).

This cannot possibly earn a legitimate score, but it can absolutely earn an ironic one. -7/10. It was legitimately a blast if you want another good-bad film to add to your catalog.