Street Fighter (film) - Plot

Plot

A multinational military force known as the Allied Nations has managed to enter the fictional South East Asian nation of Shadaloo to combat the armed forces of a drug lord turned General named M. Bison (Raul Julia), who has recently captured several dozen humanitarian workers. Via a live two-way TV broadcast, Bison demands Allied Nations regional commander, Colonel William F. Guile (Jean-Claude Van Damme) secure a US$20 billion ransom in three days, or he will kill the hostages and the world will hold Guile and the Allied Nations accountable. Guile's assistant, Cammy (Kylie Minogue), is only able to partially trace Bison's signal, determining that his hideout is somewhere in the river-delta region outside Shadaloo City.

Among the captured United Nations relief workers is Carlos "Charlie" Blanka, a peacekeeper and one of Guile's closest friends. Bison orders his henchmen to take Blanka to a laboratory, where he is to be turned into a mutated soldier, the first of many, which Bison plans to use to help him conquer the world. Placed in the incubation chamber, they use horrific images to brainwash him into a mindless killing machine. Dr. Dhalsim (Roshan Seth), a captured scientist, decides to sabotage Bison's scheme by tweaking the brainwashing process to retain Blanka's humanity.

Meanwhile, in an underground fighting arena, con artists Ryu Hoshi (Byron Mann) and Ken Masters (Damian Chapa) attempt to sell fake arms to Shadaloo Tong crime syndicate's leader Viktor Sagat (Wes Studi). His plan to kill them both by having them fight his champion, Vega (Jay Tavare), is interrupted when Guile crashes into the building and takes everyone into custody for violating a curfew. When later seeing Ryu and Ken fighting Sagat's men in the prison grounds, Guile realizes that they may be able to help him find Bison, and presses Ryu and Ken into infiltrating Sagat's gang with a homing device by staging a prison-break and faking his own death. The plan hits a snag when news reporter Chun-Li Zang (Ming-Na Wen), who wants revenge against Bison for the death of her father, finds out that Guile is alive. Her partners, Sumo wrestler E. Honda (Peter "Navy" Tuiasosopo) and professional boxer Balrog (Grand L. Bush), each of whom hold a grudge against Sagat for ruining their reputations, attempt to kill Bison and Sagat with a truck bomb, which destroys much of Bison's arms cache but fails to kill the dictator. Chun-Li and her friends are captured when Ryu and Ken seemingly turn on them, to earn Bison's trust and allow Guile to track them to Bison's lair. Once in the fortress (which is built under a Cambodian temple similar to Angkor Wat), they free Balrog and Honda, and the four of them go to find Chun-Li, who is fighting a surprised Bison in his private quarters. Unfortunately, the arrival of the others interrupts Chun-Li long enough for Bison to escape and trap the five of them by sedating them with gas.

Meanwhile, the Allied Nations is able to locate Bison's headquarters from Ryu's homing device and the explosion at Bison's camp, and since Bison's air defenses are too powerful they begin planning an amphibious assault on the base. A group of peace negotiators inform Guile that the invasion is no longer authorized, since the ransom demand is about to be paid, but Guile protests what he sees as appeasement and rallies the troops to assault on his own.

As Guile, T. Hawk (Gregg Rainwater), and Cammy head up river, they use the weapons systems on their armored speedboat to blow up Bison's radar systems. Bison detects the boat and disables its cloaking system, then uses underwater mines to blow up the speedboat. However, Guile and his two companions narrowly escape the explosion and sneak into the fortress, where Guile is ambushed by a horribly mutated Blanka, who soon recognises Guile as his friend. Guile prepares to kill Blanka to end his suffering, but Dhalsim intervenes and persuades Guile not to do so. At the same time, the 72 hour time limit Bison gave for the ransom runs out, and when Bison learns that the money has not been paid, he decides to kill the hostages. After learning from Dhalsim that Bison plans to use Blanka to execute the hostages, Guile hides in Blanka's incubation chamber and attacks Bison after being hoisted right into the command center. At the same time, a huge battle ensues between the arriving Allied Nations forces and the Bison troops while Guile and Bison fight their own, personal duel. Ken attempts to leave the battle, but returns to save Ryu from an ambush, and the two of them defeat Vega and Sagat after an intense fight.

Meanwhile, Guile's battle with Bison rages on until Guile kicks Bison into a bank of hard-drives, delivering an apparently fatal electric shock to the crazed general, until an automatic revival system brings Bison back to life. Bison then reveals his ace in the hole: his uniform is powered by electromagnetism, allowing him to shoot bolts of electricity and fly across the air, giving Guile a hard time fighting against him. Consumed by megalomania, Bison declares himself a god before flying towards Guile to deal the death blow. However, Guile counters with a well-timed roundhouse kick which sends Bison crashing into his gigantic monitor wall, resulting in a huge explosion. The damage causes severe electrical disturbances which destabilize the power system of the base, but the heroes find and release the hostages just in time, and everyone evacuates.

Guile finds his way back to the lab and tries to persuade Dhalsim and Blanka to escape with him, but Blanka refuses to return to society in his condition, and Dhalsim decides to atone for his actions by keeping him company until the end. Before the explosion, Bison's computer expert, Dee Jay (Miguel A. Nunez Jr.), steals a trunk of Bison's money from Bison's quarters and escapes through a secret passage with the recovered Sagat, avoiding arrest but getting their comeuppance upon discovering the trunk is full of Bison's useless Bison Dollars. When the temple comes crashing down after an explosion, everyone thinks that Guile was killed in the destruction, but then he emerges from the smoke. After Guile converses with Chun-Li, Ryu, Ken, Cammy, Zangief (Andrew Bryniarski) (who joined them after being informed by Dee Jay that Bison was the enemy), Balrog, E-Honda, T-Hawk, and Sawada, they see the last ruins of the temple fall and take their familiar win poses from the video game as the camera freezes and fades out.

In the home video version of the film, a post-credits scene returns to the ruins of M. Bison's lair, as the main computer announces that its batteries are recharging from solar power and it begins defibrillating Bison's heart with electricity. Bison's fist suddenly smashes through the rubble, and on a computer screen the resurrected dictator selects "World Domination: Replay."