“Street Fighter”

Published 4:37 pm Tuesday, October 20, 2026

By Bob Garver

The biggest problem with the new video game adaptation “Street Fighter” is that it’s bad on purpose.

Not “delightfully over the top” or “destined to become a cult classic,” just bad. As if having a degree of self-awareness about its unapologetic badness somehow justifies wasting two hours of its audience’s time.

The story follows a pair of former best friends – Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken (Noah Centineo) – as they reunite after a six-year estrangement for a martial arts tournament hosted by military dictator M. Bison (David Dastmalchian), who is secretly planning to drain all the energy from the winner for evil purposes. The two are recruited by Chun-Li (Callina Liang), purportedly an employee of Bison, who is secretly working to bring him down.

Neither the tournament nor the fight against Bison are very compelling, especially with hangdog Dastmalchian playing Bison. I just can’t imagine too many soldiers wanting to follow this tantrum-prone sulker into battle. The properly-villainous Raul Julia as Bison from the otherwise-disastrous 1994 “Street Fighter” wouldn’t allow this guy to serve him snails.

Everything about “Street Fighter” is terrible, from the pathetic acting to the choppy editing to the bad-taste jokes to the phony action to the unsatisfying conclusion to the poor lighting. That’s right, it’s not even lit well. And no, the argument of “It’s just supposed to be fun, it’s not supposed to win Oscars” isn’t going to work on me. Just because I know to keep my expectations low doesn’t mean I can’t recognize when a movie doesn’t have its act together, which this movie doesn’t.

Grade: D “Street Fighter” is rated PG-13 for violence/action, bloody images, strong language, sexual references, partial nudity, and brief smoking. Its running time is 119 minutes.

Contact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu.