Street Fighter (dir. Kitao Sakurai)

by Jack Martin | Oct 17, 2026

Certificate: 12A

Running Time: 120 mins

UK Distributor: Paramount Pictures

UK Release Date: 16 October 2026

WHO’S IN STREET FIGHTER?

Noah Centineo, Andrew Koji, Callina Liang, Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoa’i, David Dastmalchian, Cody Rhodes, Andrew Schulz, Eric André, Vidyut Jammwal, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Jason Momoa, Orville Peck, Olivier Richters, Hirooki Goto, Mel Jamson, Rayna Vallandingham, Alexander Volkanovski, Kyle Mooney

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Kitao Sakurai (director, writer), T.J. Fixman (writer), Cale Boyter, Stefan Makhoul, Jason Momoa, Takayuki Nakayama and Mary Parent (producers), Ken Seng (cinematographer), Luke Lynch and James Thomas (editors)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

Estranged friends Ken Masters (Centineo) and Ryu (Koji) compete in a deadly tournament…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON STREET FIGHTER?

For some inexplicable reason, the 4 Non Blondes song “What’s Up” is a recurring motif in Kitao Sakurai’s absolutely atrocious adaptation of Street Fighter. The director and co-writer must have really wanted to get his money’s worth after securing it for the soundtrack, because his film uses that song not once, not twice, but three times within its opening twenty minutes, and then later on to establish some kind of weird, otherwise non-existent character trait. I don’t know why that song exactly, unless it’s in keeping with the film’s explicitly 80s/90s retro feel, or maybe it was even just as heavily used in the original video game franchise, but get ready to be sick of that song before you reach the end of the first act.

But to be perfectly honest, the repetitive use of that song is far from the only thing you’ll be annoyed about with this movie. Sure, when you compare it to previous big-screen adaptations of the franchise – including the 1994 Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle, and the notoriously awful 2008 reboot Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li – it is perhaps the closest in terms of overall faithfulness, but that is almost like saying last year’s Smurfs movie was better than the previous ones simply because it was closer to their original designs; you’re still left with something that’s pretty bad, regardless of how faithful it is to the source material.

In fairness, it does start out with promise. Though some vividly animated flashbacks (which the entire movie should have been, quite frankly), we learn the history of fighters Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken Masters (Noah Centineo) who, despite their different backgrounds – Ryu an orphaned prodigy, and Ken a spoiled rich boy who’s been expelled from too many private schools – became almost like brothers when trained in the mystic ways of martial arts under their master Gouken (Don Lee). But shortly after he’s murdered by the evil deity Akuma (Joe Anoa’I, aka WWE legend Roman Reigns), Ryu and Ken go their separate ways, with Ryu going off the grid to become a ramen chef, and Ken becoming a washed-up media personality – until both are recruited by Chun-Li (Callina Liang) to compete in the upcoming World Warrior Tournament, as overseen by sinister dictator M. Bison (David Dastmalchian).

And right there, ironically enough when it gets to the actual fighting of the title (much of it not even taking place in the street), is when Street Fighter goes horribly south. While it is already pretty light on plot, the film suddenly descends into absolute randomness as soon as this tournament kicks off, with so many competing sub-plots that end up going nowhere, and side characters who are gone just as quickly as they enter the picture, many of them being given nothing to do other than stand around for empty fan service. Structurally, to call this movie a mess would be an insult to actual messes, because Sakurai and co-writer T.J. Fixman cram in so much that it very quickly becomes hard to care about this world or this roster of players, especially when scenes will very suddenly just become fight sequences out of nowhere, for no real reason other than, well, it’s called Street Fighter. Thought at least a couple of them bare the slightest resemblance of fun, albeit long before the rest of the film takes such a mindless nosedive, right up to a frustratingly open-ended conclusion.

To a point, that seems to be what the filmmakers are aiming for with this film. It does feel very much like a movie that would have been made and released in the 90s, to where most of it even takes place in the year 1993, not to mention that it features so many outdated characteristics from that era such as over-the-top performances, dodgy CGI effects, overblown and downright cartoonish stunt work, and a soundtrack made up of cringeworthy chart-topping hits like the Baha Men’s “Who Let the Dogs Out?” and Montell Jordan’s “This Is How We Do It” (alongside, of course, that ear-worm of a 4 Non Blondes song). But what it lacks is the charm to go alongside them all, as there’s no point in this movie where you feel as though you know or even like these characters, because not only does the script provide very little information about them other than some rather vague backstories that only fans of the games will be able o pick up on, but it also presents it in a way that gives you more of a headache than anything substantial.

You can also tell that this movie is adopting a very 90s mindset because of how juvenile and surprisingly rather pervy it can be. Much of the terrible dialogue is made up of characters making crude innuendoes towards each other without so much as a hint of realising what they’re saying is both dumb and childish, while the movie lingers far too heavily on its female characters to ensure that they have no personality other than looking attractive and dressing in borderline fetish cosplay. Chun-Li, for instance, is clearly this badass character in the games with a tragic backstory to boot, yet the very first shot she is in is focused almost entirely on her behind as she walks into frame, and then later a transition shot involves her stepping nude into a shower for, again, absolutely no reason other than to give the men in the audience something to drool over. I’m honestly amazed that the movie resists having an upskirt panty shot, though given how adolescent-minded the rest of this movie is, it unfortunately wouldn’t have been that out of place.

Unlike the recent Mortal Kombat movies, which at least had the sense to embrace its WWE-esque campiness while also being earnest as hell with its own nonsense, this version of Street Fighter is what happens when you take a knowingly silly franchise with plenty of larger-than-life characters and a preposterous lore, and double down on all of it, without any sense that the filmmakers respect or even like the material they’ve been tasked with bringing to life.

It’s a mind-numbingly stupid, narratively empty, and frankly rather dull video game movie that, just like in that 4 Non Blondes song, will leave you asking with all sincerity, “what’s going on?”

SO, TO SUM UP…

Street Fighter is an atrocious video game adaptation that starts promisingly with some striking visuals and a couple of fun action sequences, before it then nosedives into incoherent, juvenile and worst of all dull nonsense that gets more intolerable as it plods along.