Directed By Kitao Sakurai

Starring – Noah Centineo, Andrew Koji, Callina Liang

The Plot – Street Fighters Ryu (Koji) and Ken (Centineo) reunite when Chun-Li (Liang) recruits them for the World Warrior Tournament. As they face a hidden conspiracy, they must confront each other and their past-or face destruction.

Rated PG 13 for violence/action, bloody images, strong adult language, sexual references, partial nudity and brief smoking.

Street Fighter | New Trailer (2026 Movie)

POSITIVES

With the recent string of successful video game adaptations, it was only a matter of time before some daringly ambitious filmmaker attempted to restore respect and adoration to the Street Fighter franchise, after a laughably bad 1994 installment that still traumatically lingers to those unfortunate few who sat through it, and while Kitao Sakurai’s finished product regrettably doesn’t quite reach the soaring heights of Mortal Kombat 2 or Resident Evil, it does effectively energize the rabid intensity and gravitational elasticity of its 16-bit origin, bringing frenzy and spectacle by the dozen to such an electrifyingly propulsive experience that plays commandingly on the biggest screen imaginable. As a result, every spare cent of this movie’s reported 82 million dollar budget is fully realized in the sensorially stimulating appeal of this enacted product, with everything from the intricate accuracy of the costume designs, to the three dimensional tangibility of the sets immersing us effortlessly into the familiarity of this cherished property, however where Sakurai truly cements credibility for the merit of his name and his distinguished direction is in the bombastic expressionism of the movie’s exaggerated imagery, where the emphasized energies of these larger-than-life characters bursts through each frame with radiantly ultraviolet color schemes and hyper-stylized movements of the lens, in order to convey an infectiously irresistible raw enthusiasm that often operates like a live action anime cartoon at full speed. If done clumsily, this could unintentionally craft a frenetically frantic depiction to the integrity of the imagery, where the detectability in the motions of the characters feels messy and disjointed to how they’re measured impactfully in maximalist cinema, however Sakurai’s optioning of slow-motion framing, in the vein of something like Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, truly comes in handy towards gauging the supernatural strength and speeds of these battle-tested characters, without anything coherently compromising to the overall urgency and vulnerability of those continuously caught in the crosshairs of devastation, and though the better half of the action is unfortunately relegated to moments outside and away from the tournament, Sakurai’s raw enthusiasm for goofy and over-the-top action is infectiously alluring in all of the right ways, especially with the boldly absorbing sound schemes and razor-sharp fight choreography continuously working overtime to bring out the fury and ferocity of these characters’ offensive onslaughts. If this isn’t enough, the film also utilizes some impressive hand-drawn animation to the background flashbacks of every character, offering not only a feasible way of enacting such fantastically elaborate sequences, but beyond that a serviceably justifiable means of honoring the franchise’s historical roots in anime, proving it to be a film that values its past every bit as much as it does its future. Sakurai’s aforementioned unapologetic silliness is matched beat-for-beat and blow-for-blow by this rogues gallery of a decorated ensemble, who each commit themselves endlessly to the chaotic campiness that often transpires unceremoniously as the exclamation point to every delivery, with Cody Rhodes and Jason Momoa aggressively chewing the scenery at any presentable opportunity, while Noah Centineo and Andrew Koji appraise some much-needed heart to a tonally conflicted engagement that is practically begging for it. Because so much of the written material lends itself exclusively to homo-erotic responses and juvenile interactions between these competing adversaries, the bickering brotherly dynamic between Ryu and Ken serve as the stoic shoulders to which so much of the movie’s stakes rest comfortably on, with Centineo and Koji perfectly emulating the playful kind of contentious chemistry that candidly illustrates insight into their rocky pasts with one another. While their best moments in the film are spent together, separately they each bring a lot of integral ingredients to their individual appeal, with Centineo’s charisma entertainingly wielding an oafish energy that leans heavily into the ridiculousness of the character without sacrificing his integrity s as a competitor, while Koji equally cements a physical weight to action sequences, as a result of his own martial arts background, bringing a measured mystique to Ryu’s trademark stoicism that stands out amongst a crowd of comedically try-hard characters.

NEGATIVES

As much as I wanted Street Fighter to be the next gaming property that flourished successfully on the silver screen, there’s a lot of issues with the script, tone, and especially the editing, that left it a convoluted and messily jumbled finished product, reminding me that as far as we’ve come with gaming adaptations, we still have a long way to go before they reach the extent of their limitless potential. For starters, the screenplay co-written by Sakurai and T.J Fixman overwhelms itself by not only weaving in far too many characters who are continuously fighting for some semblance of framed focus to their otherwise one-dimensional outlining, but also with an abundance of exposition dumps during the opening act, that constantly halts the movie’s progress and momentum dead in its tracks, leaving audiences waiting impatiently for the moment when we can return to an unraveling narrative whose pacing persists with the urgency of slugs on a sidewalk. Considering the film clocks in at an astonishing two hour runtime, there’s simply no excuse why so many of these characters and conflicts feel so crucially underdeveloped and uninfluential with the centralized plot, leading to a lot of randomness in the sequencing of events that often transpire without any semblance of dramatic impact or contextual clarity to their manifesting, all while building towards a snoozer of a third climax that not only pertains to a nothing burger of an absentee antagonist, but also the audacious advocating of a future sequel without appraising any semblance of finality or triumph to this installment, leaving the film’s abruptly resolved ending feeling like an exploratory way out for everyone involved. On top of this, the film and its characters are compromised by the kind of juvenile, cringe-inducing humor that tries egregiously hard to constantly stick the landing, but instead elicits these humiliating bombs of deafening silence that are sure to blanket every auditorium with groans from a restless audience, who first experienced them nearly thirty years prior. While ineffective humor is one thing, abruptly jarring tonal shifts are another, as moments of Ryu and Ken nobly discussing the tutelage of their fallen teacher are surrounded by scenes of Momoa’s Blanka sniffing his own armpits and frantically calling out for his mother, while misogynistically uncomfortable comments targeted at Chun-Li’s appearance, and while comedy is ultimately subjective to the person who interprets it, for my money this is easily some of the most tastelessly depraved and counterproductively creative material that I’ve experienced this year, where despite what feels like hundreds of attempts, the movie wasn’t able to muster a single solitary laugh for me, proving once more that the worst kind of misfiring comedy are worse than any other genre of similar quality. The material does plenty to detract the merit of these performances on its own, but there are some questionable casting choices that made it a bit difficult to buy a particular actor in such a meaningful role, regrettably David Dastmalchian’s M. Bison portrayal, which lacks any of the menace or imposing stature of Raul Julia’s legendarily iconic turn during the 94′ original adaptation. While David’s snarling and scathing deliveries do enough to effectively carve out the demented sensibilities of Bison’s demeanor, it never quite feels like he comes close at embodying the physically commanding or powerfully resilient side of the character, perhaps serving as the motivational means as to why the screenwriters enacted a secondary antagonist, instead of having Dastmalchian match up to other actors who are twice his size, and while David is not the only performance that reeked of inferiority (Rhodes’ Guile or Momoa’s Blanka sets their character back forty years), he is the one that so much of the conflict centers directly around, and I found so much about his look and feel as the character so unconvincing to what was initially attained more than thirty years ago. Last but certainly not least, the editing is downright disastrous throughout this movie’s extent, crafting an unfinished feeling to the structure of events so bewildering and distracting that they make it feel like there’s more than an hour of material omitted from this finished product. I make that proclamation because not only are there multiple fights from the tournament that transpire off-screen, but also some clumsy framing that makes it feel like some characters unceremoniously disappear from the film, without anything audibly discussed to pertain to their absence. It certainly leaves the tournament feeling so insignificant to the stakes and circumstances of what’s transpiring, especially with some laborious twists that eventually rid it of some of its best personalities and advertised dream fights, but beyond that leaves so many of the character inclusions feeling like obligational extended cameos meant to adorn a trailer, providing even more underlined emphasis why the film would’ve been better suited with a trio of protagonists, rather than the Herculean need to constantly maintain more than fifteen characters from the games.

OVERALL
Street Fighter has enough stylistic flare to furiously flourish frenzy for longtime gaming enthusiasts seeking a secondary chance on the silver screen, but the bloated script, juvenile humor, and disorienting editing leave it an irreverently misguided adaptation that eventually collapses after so much structural damage, delivering a punch drunk nostalgic confection that is only slightly better than an embarrassing predecessor more than thirty years its senior.

My Grade: 4.9 or D