When she was a child, Chun-Li's (Kristin Kreuk) father (Edmund Chen) was kidnapped by crime lord M. Bison (Neal McDonough). Chun-Li seemed to be doing okay with that until she was gifted an anonymous scroll in ancient Chinese that led her to a mysterious old lady who told her to go to Thailand and look for a mysterious man named Gen (Robin Shou). She interprets this to mean "become homeless" which I don't think was actually implied, but okay. Gen grew up in Bangkok with Bison (which in no way explains Bison's quasi-Irish accent*) and used to be part of Bison's Evil Corp. but left because he didn't want to be evil anymore. He teaches Chun-Li magic which I think is supposed to just be a visual manifestation of chi but looks like the floaty red health orbs from God of War. (Mixing video game references?! Lucy, you uncultured swine!)
*So, the backstory is that Bison's family were Irish missionaries who died when he was a baby and he was raised in a Thai orphanage. Accents are not genetic. They are very much learned. It is excruciating to hear McDonough, an actor I've enjoyed in many other things!, half-ass this accent when the story doesn't even call for him to have one. But frankly, this movie is so bad, complaining about the accent is like criticizing the silverware on the Titanic.
This script is a dumpster fire of cliches. The wire work in the fight scenes adds a weird stilted quality that does not match the ground work. Editing is a car crash. Kreuk herself is actually not bad! The scenes that require her to act seem natural. Pianist? Totally believable. Sad orphan? Yes. Quippy one-liner action hero? See notes on dumpster fire script. But at least she's trying! Moon Bloodgood is reduced to Hot Cop and the less said of Chris Klein's bargain-bin-Don-Johnson Interpol agent the better.
In fact, I fast forwarded through every scene with the cop subplot and it improved the film tremendously. Which is another great argument for streaming. If I had had to suffer through this in a theater, I might have lost my cherub-like demeanor. It is streaming on HBO Max but you love yourself enough not to watch it. Don't you?
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