Street Fighter - The Legend of Chun-Li (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Album Review

Composer Stephen Endelman didn't have a lot to work with in accepting the assignment to score director Andrzej Bartkowiak's martial arts action picture Street Fighter: Legend of Chun-Li, based on the Street Fighter video game. But he has made more of it than might have been expected. Mixing orchestra with synthesizer, he is forced to do some generic writing for the action sequences, some of which come right up front. ("Opening Credits" is actually the fourth cue.) The best he can manage to make such music interesting is to throw in an unusual time signature now and then; he's also fond of cut time, setting his melodies at half the speed of the driving rhythm. He is at his best with the infrequent calmer moments of the film, notably the "Opening Credits" and the cues called "Leaving Home" and "Reunited with Father," when he is able to employ a bit of Eastern tonality (the film is nominally set in Bangkok) and can get a somewhat wistful feeling into his writing. There isn't a lot of time for that sort of thing between chase scenes and fight scenes, but Endelman's music is better than the movie deserves.