'Street Fighter' Review: The Film That Faints at Halftime

Kitao Sakurai's "Street Fighter" stops working at almost exactly the halfway mark. That is the verdict delivered by the review's critic, who writes that the film's collapse is so precise "you could set your watch to" it.

The culprit is structural. The film builds toward a central tournament — an elimination series of seven fights — and then shows, by the critic's count, "maybe one and a half" of them.

For a martial arts film adapted from a fighting video game, this is an odd choice. The genre exists to stage combat. Skipping the combat is like a whodunit that skips the detective.

What works before the fall?

The review is not unkind to the film's first half. It praises a "streamlined, delightfully cartoonish saga" that carries the story toward the tournament. The tone, in other words, is doing its job right up until the plot arrives.

That contrast is the review's sharpest point. A film can be fast, funny and faithful to its source material, and still fumble the one thing audiences bought tickets for.

A title that lands the punch

The review's own headline — "Video Game Fighter Film Knocks Itself Unconscious" — compresses the argument into seven words. The film doesn't lose a fight. It defeats itself.

The verdict, then: promising setup, botched payoff. Audients deciding whether to catch Sakurai's adaptation now know the risk. The first half delivers. The tournament, regrettably, mostly doesn't happen.