Friday, March 06, 2009

STREET FIGHTER THE MOVIE 2(2009) NOW AVAILABLE

Here is the summary for the movie Street Fighter 2 from imdb

The movie opens with Chun Li narrating her experience growing up aspiring to be a concert pianist. As a child, she moves from San Francisco to Hong Kong with her family. There, along with piano, she learns Wushu from her father, Xiang, who is a well connected businessman. One night, her home is attacked by Bison and his henchman. Chun Li's father fights them off until Balrog grabs a hold of a young Chun Li, forcing him to surrender. As Bison and his men are leaving with Xiang, Chun Li's mother tries to stop them. Balrog just punches her.

Years later, Chun Li grows up and becomes a talented concert pianist. At the end of one of her concerts, she receives a scroll written in Ancient Chinese text. On her way home, she sees a mysterious homeless man getting assaulted by street thugs. After the thugs leave, Chun Li tends to him and notices a spiderweb tattoo on his hand. Meanwhile, Xiang is shown working for Bison as a prisoner. In return for his services, he is allowed to view pictures of his daughter all grown up. Back home, Chun Li's mother finally loses her battle to cancer as Chun Li and her servants mourn her loss at a funeral

Elsewhere, we see Nash and Maya investigating a murder of several heads of criminal syndicate families in Bangkok. Chun Li on the side is meeting with a wise old lady in town who studies the scroll and tells her to find a man named Gen in Bangkok, revealing to her an image of the same spiderweb she saw tattooed on the homeless man's hand. With a new goal in mind, Chun Li leaves her home and heads to Bangkok. After weeks of searching for Gen without any luck, she sees a man being assaulted in an alley by thugs. Chun Li comes to his rescue and fights them. After a long battle ended by finishing them with a Bike Rack Drop Ultra move, Chun Li collapses in exhaustion. There, we see Gen pick her up to take her to his home.

Gen tells Chun Li that he knows how to find her father and that Bison has him, but that she also needs anger management. In response, she goes to an internet cafe and logs onto shoryuken.com to find out more about Bison, who is now holding the families of property owners hostage in order to force them to sign their property over to him. Upon leaving, one of the owners is asked to hand over the rights to a docking harbor, allowing the shipment of the "White Rose". Chun Li overhears this. Meanwhile at Interpol, Nash figures out that Bison's headquarters are right across the street from the Police Station.

Later that night, Cantana, one of Bison's secretaries, goes to a nightclub. Chun Li spies on her and notices her jocking the girls in the club. Chun Li moves in and seductively dances with her before casually walking away into the bathroom. Cantana, sex driven, follows her and locks the bathroom window. There, Chun Li beats her into giving out the location of the White Rose. Cantana's bodyguards come back and Chun Li escapes after a brief shootout.

We are then told of Bison's origins. He is the son of Irish missionaries. He grew up an orphan having to steal fish from people in Thailand. In order to lose his conscience, he forced his daughter out of the womb of his wife prematurely. This somehow transferred his conscience into her. Back at Gen's home, Bison's henchmen come after Gen and Chun Li. Gen fights them off until Balrog blows up his house with a rocket launcher. With Gen gone and nowhere to be found, Chun Li runs off. She is then attacked by Vega, who she defeats soundly and hangs upside down since his claws weren't sharp enough to cut rope.

Chun Li then heads to the harbor and interrogates an employee into telling her the arrival time of the White Rose. Later that night, this turns out to be a trap as several Shadaloo soldiers capture her. Chun Li is then taken back to Shadaloo headquarters and is reunited with her father. Bison tells her that Xiang outlived his usefulness and breaks his neck, killing him. Bison and Balrog leave Chun Li to the henchman to finish off. Chun Li however escapes when they try to swing her around from the ceiling like a pinata. As she runs away, she is shot in the arm by Balrog. Before Balrog could recapture her, the crowd begins throwing durians at him. This scares Balrog as he drives off in his Benz. Chun Li meanwhile, is rescued again by Gen, who survived the explosion.

Chun Li approaches Nash and tells him she needs backup to take down Bison. Nash and Maya oblige as Chun Li approaches the dock employee who set her up last time. The employee tells her that he was forced into deceiving her and tells her the real arrival time. Chun Li doubts him at first, but he points to the white board at the arrival time, proving that it is true. At the dock later that night, Interpol agents engage in a shootout with Shadaloo soldiers. On a ship, Chun Li finds a girl asking where her father is. Meanwhile, Gen fights Balrog and kills him by stabbing him with a pipe spraying nitrogen. We later find out that the girl is Bison's daughter and her name is Rose, making her the White Rose. Bison takes her in and welcomes her warmly.

Bison walks into his office where he is ambushed by Gen. Gen however is no match for him. Sensing his daughter in danger, Bison goes back to his daughters room, where he finds she is gone. Gen shows up again and ambushes Bison, getting beaten up again. Chun Li then comes in and fights Bison. After a long battle, she hits him with a bamboo pole a couple times and drops some sandbags on him, making him dizzy. She then charges up a Kikoken and shoots it at him, knocking him off the scaffolding they were fighting on, then jumping on his neck and twisting it, killing him.

Back home, Chun Li is settled down as Gen pays her a visit. He shows her an ad for a Street Fighter tournament, telling her about a Japanese fighter named "Ryu something". Chun Li declines, saying that she's home for now.



Here is a review for the movie Street Fighter 2 from dvdtalk

If memories could be dialed back to the dark ages of the mid-1990s for a moment, recall that the last time the "Street Fighter" video game empire was adapted for the big screen, it concerned a cartoonishly costumed Jean-Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue trying to save the world from the demonic clutches of an infirmed Raul Julia. Unsurprisingly, the film tanked. Now 15 years later, a new challenger has arrived with "Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li," and this production is armed with a few clumsy television actors, Chris Klein, and a member of the Black Eyed Peas. This is not progress.

A criminal mastermind of the highest order, Bison (Neal McDonough) rules the streets of Bangkok with his right hand man Balrog (Michael Clarke Duncan), along with assassin Vega (Taboo) and corporate vixen Cantana (Josie Ho). With Bison's vicious Shadaloo syndicate placing the city into a state of panic, it's up to a highly trained warrior, Chun-Li (Kristin Kreuk, trying for earnestness and failing), and her unwavering dedication to justice to infiltrate Bison's underworld and battle to save the city. On Chun-Li's trail is Interpol agent Charlie Nash (Chris Klein), a man equally driven to stop Bison, rising above the law to join the lady brawler as she sets out to squash evil.

The pie crust of the "Legend" failure was shaped early on by the producers when they hired Andrzej Bartkowiak to direct this fresh attempt to merge the video game world with big screen heroics. Here's a list of the director's achievements: "Doom," "Exit Wounds," "Romeo Must Die," and "Cradle 2 the Grave." Not the most inspiring of filmographies. Certainly the new, hardened tone for "Street Fighter" requires a visionary who once helmed three DMX motion pictures, but his limitations as a storyteller and architect of foot-first action once again crumbles a promising feature film. However, Bartkowiak's numerous directorial blunders are only but a toe dipped into the pool of "Legend" futility.

With only a few characters and elements adapted from the video game series that began its reign of quarter munching over 20 years ago, the new "Street Fighter" picture is a distinct departure from the 1994 event movie failure, removing an overall cartoon atmosphere for a grittier tone concentrating on straightforward revenge scenarios, Eastern mysticism, and adding a dab of verisimilitude to once colorful characters. The screenplay by Justin Marks is surprisingly straight-faced, aggressively attempting to assign new mythos to these famous characters that will generate a sprawling fight saga to be feasted upon over several sequels and assorted gaming tie-ins. The ambition is brave, but the execution is the pits, turning the beloved "Street Fighter" legacy into a cruddy, smalltime Sci-Fi Original production, perhaps too serious for its own good.

While I do use the word "serious," "Legend" is far from Masterpiece Theater. At its core, the picture is still a crude martial arts demonstration reel, only Bartkowiak fumbles the heated encounters with ripsaw editing and clumsy choreography that exposes the actors counting off the moves in their head. It's impossible to kick back and embrace the violence when it's all made a blur, occasionally punctuated by a famous "Street Fighter" finishing move or special effect. The action is largely routine, PG-13 filler, but so is the entire movie, lamely lurching from conflict to conflict in a programmed manner. At this point, I'm positive Bartkowiak wouldn't know nail-biting tension even if it came up and bit him on the nose.

The only joy of "Legend" is watching the actors struggle to rise above the mundane details, only to spectacularly fail without assistance from behind the camera. Chris Klein takes the cake here, assuming a strange mix of Clint Eastwood and metrosexual pedophile as he swaggers around the locations trying his damndest to come across as a tough guy. It's hilarious to observe his cheese, especially in the presence of the other actors, who I swear are holding back giggles. Neal McDonough also deserves a fair share of raspberries for his acting, slipping on a goofy Irish accent to play pure Bangkok evil. Of course, why an Irish baby orphaned as an infant in Bangkok would retain a thick brogue in his adulthood is not explained, but very little of the film is, preferring the catchall Eastern locations to play ball any way it likes.

"Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li" is more numbing than awful (though a lesbian dance-off sequence with Chun-Li and Cantana pushes the needle into the red), and with a lack of gaming tributes and spectacular brawling, it's difficult to understand why the feature was even made in the first place. The end promises a sequel that appears to right several wrongs, but after this installment, I doubt enough audience members will be eager to endure another round with this mishandled franchise. I'll take Jean-Claude Van Damme and his powder blue beret any day over this insipid, clunky, and joyless motion picture.


Here is the direct download for the movie Street Fighter 2.

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