In Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, Kristin Kreuk's character goes on a journey in Bangkok to search for the wise martial artist Gen. I had a similar experience; I had to search all of Blockbuster to find this movie, and, just like Gen, it evaded me until, through the power of opening my third eye (asking an employee), I found it on the bottom shelf in the back.

The movie, based on the Capcom game of the same name, is very disappointing. Kreuk was plucked from Smallville, where she delivered deadpan lines, and was put into a movie that was supposed to have a lot of emotion. Some scenes are just too funny to take as seriously as they were intended, like Kreuk researching the evil Bison (Neal McDonough) and, after realizing his diabolical plan, simply staring anticlimactically into the computer. There haven't been so many blank stares since MTV's The City. The screenplay was written by Justin Marks, who said "we wanted this to have its own fingerprint." Indeed it does-that of a dead guy.

The DVD looks like it has a lot of special features but is basically rehashing the same information. If one wants to know about the wire work used to levitate the actors, then they can watch the unrated version (which is almost the same as the theatrical version except for the disembodied heads and use of a human punching bag) with director and actor commentaries or they can watch one of the featurettes. The three featurettes - "Becoming a Street Fighter," "Chun-Li: Bringing the Legend to Life," and "Fox Movie Channel presents Making a Scene" - all blur together in terms of content. Wire work is talked about ad nauseam and everybody says what a great acrobat Lang-uh, Kreuk, is.

The acting may be horrible at times, but the story itself sort of balances out the movie (like Transformers). But the actors aside, the movie was still awful. The only way to watch the movie is with the commentary because it is a guide through the movie, which has a backstory that requires its own prequel. Apparently Nash's (Chris Klein's character) family was killed by Bison and that is why he is in Thailand. Don't look for it in the movie.

The commentary does deserve recognition. The cultural and historical aspect of it was fascinating. Thailand and Bangkok were two of the prominent shooting locations and the directors talked about what a pulse both the cities had. They said that it wasn't like New York City where people would curse you out in traffic, but instead was very Zen-like. The buildings that were chosen were structures with a lot of history; Gen's hideout was a Buddhist temple and the Interpol hideout is a structure that was built in brackish water and is now collapsing into the Chao Phraya River in China.

If one can't get enough of Kreuk's blank stares or Klein's bad acting then they can watch one of the 14 deleted scenes. These little nuggets are jam-packed with stuff they should (not) have shown in theatres, like the "Nightclub Bathroom" scene. The only thing it showed was Chun-Li running across the bathroom sink. But the real treats were all the scenes where Klein tried to act like a desperado but came across like a bad impression of Clint Eastwood.

There are three galleries that are interesting to look at, one of which is a comparison of the film to the game. Don't look for any bits of the game, though. It is the pictures of the actors and actresses next to drawings. More could have been done with the galleries, like adding the actual character from the games and have the director and costume designer talk about why they chose to deviate from the original costumes. The other two galleries are just storyboards and production stills.

One of the things that confused the heck out of me is the unrated cut of the film. It seems silly to just add a couple scenes and put the same film twice. Couldn't they have added those bloody scenes with the other deleted ones?

There is a bright side to the DVD though, a trailer for the Marvel vs. Capcom 2 game. It boasts over 50 characters and is in the style of the old arcade games but with two additional features which look awesome: tag-team matches and online multiplayer capability.

The bottom line is the film deserves to be hidden in the back of movie stores, where it belongs.