The Street Fighter's Last Revenge

Japan had its Bruce Lee craze just like everywhere else in the early seventies and Sonny Chiba was their answer to Bruce Lee. Along with the vicious action scenes there were some typically Japanese acts of misogyny which seem pretty bizarre to Western audiences when it's the "hero" doing it (When was the last time you saw Chuck Norris or Jackie Chan sell a woman off to a slave ring because she couldn't afford to pay for getting her brother out of jail?). STREET FIGHTER'S LAST REVENGE is somewhat tamer than the first entries into the series. This time around Chiba is more of a James Bond kinda character, donning rubber masks and vampire fangs(!) and is mixed up in a plot involving cassettes with top secret information. There's also some Gong Show-type freak (Who you see a lot of on Japanese TV) who can break chains (He actually uses a laser) who's heard to kill Chiba (Yeah, right!). Along with the awful dubbing there's also the same black and white footage where Chiba, as a kid, sees his father executed to the Chinese which turns up in all the STREET FIGHTER movies.

This is not a real street fighter movie. There's no way that this is the same character as the first two movies... why does he have some kind of secret hideout, with disguises and spy-gadgets??? Tsurugi (note: NOT SUGURY) is a violent man, who only does good, because in the end it is what is in his best interest. He's not a super-hero spy or any of the campy crap that can be found in this movie, the third installment. He doesn't call himself "THE STREETFIGHTER" in the first two movies, so why all of a sudden does he say: "They call me THE STREETFIGHTER". The only reason to watch this movie is Chiba and Sue Shiomi. But don't go into it expecting Chiba to have his usual Terry Tsurugi KILLPOWER, because he barely has any in this movie... plus the story is weak in comparison to the first two. The dude who can cut stuff with his laser hands??? All I have to say to him is: "NICE HAT!". Not a cool villain at all. It's not a Street Fighter movie without Junjou.

If you love THE STREET FIGHTER (and you probably do if you looked up this entry) don't even bother with this final entry in the series. This one sucks out loud, and has only one decent fight scene which lasts for about a minute. Our hero now has taken on a more "MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE"-type persona since he now is a master of disguise (???). Skip this.

I don't know whether the terrible dubbing on my DVD is to blame, but the plot to this third and final film in The Streetfighter series made very little sense to me—some nonsense to do with a pair of cassette tapes containing the formula for synthetic heroin. Sonny Chiba's hard-as-nails mercenary Terry Tsurugi is double-crossed by the Yakuza over the sale of one of these tapes and consequently takes revenge, taking time out from the kicking and punching to get jiggy with sexy siren Aya Ôwada (Reiko Ike, who goes topless). Oh, and there's a mariachi in a big black sombrero who fires lasers from his fingers, and Terry dresses up like Dracula.

Clearly, it's all a far cry from the gritty brutality of the original film, with Terry more secret agent than anti-hero, complete with headquarters featuring sliding silver doors. Terry even dons latex masks, Mission Impossible style, to change his identity. Even though I usually welcome a healthy dollop of wackiness in my martial arts films, It simply doesn't suit this series, being too far removed from the previous films, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed. I wanted more of the same, but what I got was a whole load of silliness. Very disappointing.

3.5 out of 10, generously rounded up to 4 for Reiko Ike.

In Tony Scott's True Romance, from a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino, Christian Slater's Clare Worley takes his date to the movies to see Sonny Chiba's Streetfighter trilogy. When he is questioned about Chiba's questionable 'heroics', Worley responds that, "he ain't so much a good guy as he is just a bad motherf****r." A long-time fan, Tarantino hits the nail on the head here (he would go on to cast his idol in the Kill Bill films). While Bruce Lee was wowing the world with the speed and agility of the martial arts, Sonny Chiba was demonstrating its brutal, more unforgiving side. In The Streetfighter's Last Revenge, Chiba's anti- hero Takuma Tsurugi is at his most sadistic. He may have punched a guy's eyeballs out of his head in the previous instalment, but here he calmly burns a thug alive in an incinerator.

Much of the appeal of Chiba's movies lies with his sneering approach to the ancient arts, where he is far more comfortable sadistically beating a bad guy to a bloody pulp than he is with finding inner peace. This trilogy-closer has upped his mean streak, and made things a hell of a long weirder. The Streetfighter was excellent, Return of the Streetfighter was passable, and The Streetfighter's Last Revenge comes across as a bunch of scenes discarded from the previous movies for being too bonkers. Not only is Tsurugi a near- unstoppable punch, kick and throw machine, but he now dons Mission: Impossible-esque face masks to disguise his identity, and at one point bears vampire fangs for unexplained reasons. There's also a villain even James Bond would chuckle at: A mafia hit-man who dresses like a mariachi with a giant sombrero and shoots invisible laser beams out of his hands.

The plot itself is incredibly simple. Tsurugi is hired to rescue Go Owada (Akira Shioji) from a police riot in exchange for a hefty payment. When he goes to collect his loot, he is handed a bag of cut-up newspaper and is attacked by the Owada family's men. Furious, he decides to take revenge on the gangsters. There's also a stolen tape and a master foe in Kunagami (Koji Wada). Noticeably less violent than the previous entries, this third feature shares more in common with a spy film than the martial arts genre. As a result, it's less fun, and only manages to pique the interest when at its most idiosyncratic and just plain daft. It's also nice to see exploitation icon Reiko Ike in a supporting role as Chiba's wannabe sidekick. But ultimately, Last Revenge stutters through a threadbare story, failing to deliver the sort of gory chopsocky that made the original so wonderful. Clearly the weakest of the trilogy.