Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Van Damme is Colonel Guile, the Allied Nations commando who leads an elite team of street fighters against the forces of the mad General M. Bison. Bison, who has hatched an evil plan for world domination, takes dozens of relief workers hostage and gives the world only 72 hours to respond to his twisted demands. In that time, Guile must find the captives and confront Bison in an electrifying battle for the fate of the free world.

Wow, it has been awhile since I’d seen this one and I had honestly forgot just how bad it was. This is one of the most disappointing game translations to screen ever. Capcom’s fighter is nearly legendary in the gaming community and everyone was pretty excited by the cast involved in this film adaptation. Unfortunately it ended up being a pretty cheesy mess. I guess we’ll see how round two goes when the new Street Fighter film is released in theaters this summer. From the trailers it doesn’t look like it’s going to be much better though.

The HD presentation is pretty disappointing. It has been a long time since I’d seen this film so I don’t know how faithful this is to the production but the print shows obvious wear and detail is pretty disappointing. The image has a very noisy look to it and its accentuated with obvious sharpening that leaves everything looking a bit too hard and unrealistic. Ringing is also rampant throughout the film. Contrast levels are on the weak side and shadow detail suffers. Fine object detail is pretty good in close ups but it doesn’t make up for the rest of the obvious shortcomings.

The lossless audio presentation also shows its age. Overall fidelity is a bit weak but the track does manage to deliver a somewhat compelling soundstage. Dynamic range is lacking and the low bass extension is pretty tame all things considering. Dialogue sounds natural enough but the sound design of the film doesn’t do the production any favors.

Extras include a look at the new addition to the game franchise with trailers for Street Fighter 4, which just came out for console gaming. You also get some production features, deleted scenes and a feature commentary with the director.

This is one to stay clear of. Unless you are already a fan of the film there just isn’t any real reason to visit it now. If you need a Street Fighter fix, check out the new game on shelves now.