Street Fighter

It's 1993. Capcom's fighting-game cathedral gets another live-action shot, this time from Kitao Sakurai, the guy who made "Bad Trip" and most of "The Eric Andre Show." Andrew Koji is Ryu, Noah Centineo is Ken, and Callina Liang is Chun-Li, pulling the two estranged brothers-in-arms into the World Warrior Tournament. The early stretch is the gang-up: Ryu wandering, Ken domesticated, Chun-Li recruiting, and a very loud roster of fighters getting introduced one bone-rattling cameo at a time. Jason Momoa is Blanka. Cody Rhodes is Guile. 50 Cent is Balrog. Roman Reigns is Akuma. Vidyut Jammwal is Dhalsim. That's the pitch and the problem.

Sakurai is a weird, good choice. He knows how to shoot a stunt without smearing it into pixels, and the fight choreography has actual geography — you can see feet, you can see impact, you can tell who hit who. Koji earned this role on "Warrior" and he brings a quiet center that keeps the movie from floating off. Jammwal doing Dhalsim is the kind of casting a fan does on a napkin and nobody expects to get. Momoa is having the time of his life as a feral green electric man and the camera knows it. The 1993 setting lets the production design go full neon arcade without apologizing. When it hits a hadouken, it hits a hadouken.

It's long, it's loud, and the script is a clothesline for cameos. Centineo is still trying to find Ken past the hair. Half the roster gets maybe four lines before the next entrance music cue. The pro-wrestler casting pays off physically and costs dearly in close-ups, where some of these guys cannot sell a reaction shot to save their lives. Sakurai's chaos-comedy instincts occasionally undercut moments the movie wants you to take seriously, and the plot machinery between fights is the same tournament scaffolding you've seen a hundred times. Critics landing at 45% aren't wrong; they just wanted a different movie than the one being made.

If you liked "Mortal Kombat" (2021) and "Bullet Train" and you've ever paid for a Capcom fighting game, you're already in. If you watch wrestling, you're in twice. If you need an ensemble piece where every character gets an arc, this will annoy you by the forty-minute mark. People who quit "Kingsman" because it was too much will quit this by the first Blanka scream. People who rewatch "Rumble in the Bronx" on purpose will have a great time.

BACKGROUND TV because the thing it's good at — big-swing fight sequences and committed-bit casting — doesn't require your full attention, and the thing it's bad at — plot, dialogue between knuckles — rewards you for not giving it. There's no lecture here; the movie's only sermon is that street fighting is cool, which it preaches through actual street fighting. That's a craft choice, not a politics. 84% audience versus 45% critic is the fingerprint of a movie that's doing exactly what fans wanted and nothing more. Put it on, fold laundry, look up when someone yells "shoryuken." You'll be fine.