“Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li” is awful. Represented as a reboot to this video game franchise, like “Batman Begins” was for the Caped Crusader, it fails to attract the common viewer let alone those die-hard Street Fighter fans. Even the decent action sequences and a steady performance by Kristin Kreuk can’t save this atrocity.

As the title of the film suggests, this is how Chun-Li (Kreuk) becomes the woman she is now. Her dad, Xiang (Edmund Chen), envisioned his princess as a concert pianist, but she loved martial arts as well. Followers of the game will already hate the change of story, as Chun-Li is an INTERPOL agent, not a pianist.

Xiang is also a well-known businessman with deep connections that bad men, like Bison (Neal McDonough) would love to have, so they attempt to kidnap him. He doesn’t go down willingly until Bison assures him that Chun-Li won’t be harmed.

Life goes on after this tragedy, and Chun-Li is now all grown up. She starts getting weird, cryptic signs, which lead her to Bangkok. Once there, she is seeking out a man named Liu Kang, umm, Gen (Robin Shou). He and Bison were well-known members of the Shadaloo, but when he couldn’t do the things Bison could, Gen decided to create his own group to fight them, known as the Web of Shadows.

Chun-Li and Gen aren’t the only people looking for Bison. On his tail are Bangkok Police detective Maya Sunee (Moon Bloodgood) and INTERPOL agent Charlie Nash (Chris Klein). Nash has been looking for Bison all these years but could never come close.

One of the biggest mistakes that director Andrzej Bartkowiak (who is getting close to Uwe Boll territory) and screenwriter Justin Marks did is not fully focusing on Chun-Li. Even though she is the titular character, she shares it with Bison and Nash. Kreuk is a good fit as Chun-Li and evokes emotion for the audience to feel, with whatever little material and screen time she’s got. But when she isn’t on screen, we get McDonough, who is already a prime choice for one of the worst performances of 2009. His accent is so over-the-top that sometimes he can’t keep it consistent. It was straight out horrendous, and inadverently funny. Or we get Klein, who speaks deep, slow and wanting every word to matter, like David Caruso’s character on “CSI: Miami.” That isn’t a good thing, it’s straight out annoying.

Another mistake the film producers made is not making full use of characters fans have been in love with. “Street Fighter IV,” the newly released game by Capcom has Ryu and Ken on the cover, yet they make no appearance whatsoever. People will recognize Chun-Li, Nash, Bison, Gen and other minor characters like Balrog (Michael Clarke Duncan) and Vega (Taboo). But to exclude the likes of Ryu, Ken or Guile is plain out dumb.

But the worst thing was attempting to draw sympathy towards Bison. Bison is a man that is bent on creating hell for everyone, or so the movie tries to depict. There is no logical reason for the writers to delve into his story. Unless the bad guy has an arc where he eventually becomes bad, just present the guy as a ruthless killing son-of-a-bitch. Don’t try to bring pity on the audience when it obviously can’t be drawn from.

The action can be exhilarating at times. They try to keep the feel and impact of the game as close as possible and, in certain sequences, they do it well. But there are other times the editors don’t know how to piece scenes together. Chun-Li would be doing a back flip onto a box and the next scene will show her not even close to any of those boxes. That kind of inconsistency kills the action whenever it’s about to catch any sort of momentum.

It’s not the worst video game adaptation but it’s awfully close. With a sequel inevitable, here are a few tips for the producers: get rid of that Boll wannabe, fire the screenwriter, recast Charlie, bring back Kreuk, and add characters fans care for. That way, we can avoid another catastrophe for this Capcom title.