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Street Fighter feels like someone was held at gunpoint and forced to write a movie using nothing but a shoebox full of G.I. Joes and three pages of the Street Fighter II instruction booklet. It was an early demonstration of Hollywood's firm belief that anyone who plays video games is either 7 years old or was hit in the head by a chunk of concrete dislodged from the front steps of a rec center during a helicopter crash. And Raul Julia is all over this motherfucker, chewing the scenery like he's trying to bite his way through a binding of rope before a bomb explodes.



His eyes are played by golf balls with dots on them.

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Street Fighter can't decide whether it wants to be wacky or dramatic, frequently shifting its tone in the middle of a scene and occasionally in the middle of a sentence. For example, at one point two characters are taken to a torture chamber, where the jailer's ineffectual attempts to flay them are played up for laughs. However, the second the jailer leaves the room in frustrated embarrassment, the two characters begin a stonefaced discussion on the horrors of torture. They exchange a few solemn, contemplative nods, and then end the scene by telling a gay joke and ripping a giant iron chain out of the wall with their bare hands. This isn't an isolated incident, either -- every scene in this movie is ludicrous to the point of being gibberish.

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I'd like to be able to say that Raul Julia is the film's high point, and I suppose he technically is, but all he really does is wear an assortment of vinyl capes and Nazi hats and deliver the hamboniest dialogue ever written. Unlike the filmmakers, who couldn't figure out exactly what kind of movie they wanted to make, Raul clearly decided that Street Fighter was meant to be utterly ridiculous. He may have gotten this idea from the scene in which he transforms a man into a giant green troll doll with Kool-Aid, or it may have occurred to him during the five-minute sequence wherein he tries to blow up an invisible speedboat with a Super Street Fighter II arcade stick.