Oct 16, 2026 6:14pm IST
‘Street Fighter’ Review: Vidyut Jammwal, Andrew Koji And Noah Centineo’s Film Is All Button-Mashing, No Action
Playing a new video game is exciting because you never quite know what awaits you at the next level. There could be a formidable boss, a spectacular fight sequence or a new move that changes the way you play. But what happens when you load up a new game, pick your favourite fighter and realise you have been here before? Worse, what happens when you keep pressing the same buttons, expecting a different result, only to discover that nothing particularly exciting happens? Welcome to “Street Fighter”.
The latest adaptation of the popular video game franchise feels like a game that promises multiple levels of action but forgets to make any of them exciting. There are fighters, rivalries, villains, an elaborate tournament and enough subplots to fill several games. Yet, somehow, there is very little to engage with. If you have been looking for a movie to help you catch up on some sleep, this might be the perfect power-saving mode.
The biggest problem is that “Street Fighter” cannot decide when it wants to fight and when it wants to talk. Just when a scene seems ready to deliver an explosive showdown, the characters start talking. And when a conversation might have helped establish a character or explained a motivation, the film rushes towards another fight. The action choreography offers little to marvel at, with few moments of genuine dexterity or impact. For a film centred on the world's best fighters, the fights rarely make you feel like you are watching the best in the business.
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It gets worse when the tournament, supposedly the game's biggest level, arrives. There is little build-up to the event, and the film seems in such a hurry to get through its checklist that it skips over the tournament's first fight altogether, simply declaring a winner. Imagine playing a fighting game that skips the first round and tells you that you have won. What was the point of picking a character in the first place?
The same problem plagues the subplots. There are two friends whose falling-out needs more emotional weight, a villain whose plans should feel menacing and a supposedly surprising revelation involving an undercover agent on the bad guys' team. Each could have added something to the story. Instead, they arrive with barely any groundwork, compete for screen time and disappear before they can make much of an impression. There is so much happening that it often feels as though nothing is actually happening.
Andrew Koji and Noah Centineo, playing Ryu and Ken respectively, have the difficult task of selling a friendship and rivalry that the film never develops enough to make compelling. You know there is history between the two, but the emotional payoff feels decidedly mid. Their animated backstory sequences, which explore their training, an earlier fighting tournament and the events behind their falling-out, are arguably the film's most engaging moments. They offer a glimpse of the character-driven story the live-action portions could have been.
Vidyut Jammwal, meanwhile, makes his presence felt, but there is only so much an actor can do when the material gives him little to work with. His performance is fine, but it does little to paper over the film's larger cracks. David Dastmalchian's M. Bison suffers from writing that makes the villain's dialogue sound more awkward than intimidating. For someone meant to be a formidable threat, Bison rarely inspires the fear or excitement the story needs.
The film's final stretch should be where all the buttons pressed in earlier levels finally pay off. Instead, even the moments designed to make audiences cheer arrive without enough build-up to generate excitement. A climactic moment is only as satisfying as the journey leading to it, and “Street Fighter” seems to have skipped several crucial stages.
At one point, a song (‘What’s Up’) featuring the lead pair ends with the words, "What's going on?" It is an perfect summary of the viewing experience. You keep waiting for the game to reveal its bigger purpose, for a fight to land or for a subplot to click into place. The credits arrive before much of that happens.
“Street Fighter” is not short of characters or ideas. It is short of the patience to develop them and the imagination to make its action memorable. It keeps offering familiar moves without finding a new way to use them. You came looking for the next level. Instead, you get the same level on repeat, and no amount of button-mashing can make it more fun.
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