Review – Street Fighter

Here’s an extremely rare anomaly: a movie – and an action movie at that – in which the only good part is the art direction. There are plenty of pictures out there that are notable only for script or acting or direction, and there are more than a few that are worth watching due to some combination of lighting, editing, cinematography and the like. But this is little more than yet another cheap martial arts flick based on a video game. The acting is dreadful. The effects are fairly bad. Aside from a line or two, the script is witless and cartoonish. Overall, it’s an excellent candidate for “see if desperate” if not “wish I’d skipped it.” But the sets are literally littered with odd little in-jokes. My favorite example: the inner sanctum of arch-villain General Bison is decorated with a copy of David’s famous painting of Napoleon on horseback with Bison astride the steed. Better yet, another painting in the lair shows Bison as Pogo the Clown, John Wayne Gacy’s alter-ego in many of the mass murderer’s self portraits. Other than these Easter eggs, however, this movie is notable mostly as the last screen appearance of Raul Julia, yet another tragic victim of the Fiendish Curse of Peter Sellers. Mildly amusing