The Street Fighter

Streetfighter is a show case for the karate talents of Sonny Chiba. Chiba plays Terry Tsurugi, a man who was orphaned when his Japanese father was executed in China during World War II. Terry is now back in Japan and kicking ass for a living. He's the best of the best in Japan and is hired to help get a criminal on death row out of prison. He manages to do this using an ancient technique (yeah, I know, they all use some ancient technique). Sonny then ends up killing the guy's brother due to an argument over payment and getting his sister sold into prostitution.

After this Sonny is propositioned by the Yakuza to kidnap a girl who is an oil heiress. Sonny jumps sides and starts working for her protectors after a show down with her uncle, the leader of a karate school. This flick is packed with violence galore. Sonny does some pretty cool stuff, and amazingly, the whole plot manages to come together at the end. There are also a few one liners that are pretty cool.

This is the flick that made me a Sonny Chiba fan.

Remember during the height of the martial arts movie boom (roughly 1973-1976) the reputation that chopsocky films had for being replete with misery, violence, gore and degradation of the human spirit? Well, most films in the genre didn't live up to the hype at all. THE STREETFIGHTER, however, set the standard for onscreen insanity, was originally rated X for violence, and has yet to be equalled (well...maybe THE STORY OF RIKI) for sheer, nasty entertainment value.

Sonny Chiba stars as Terry Tsurugi, an utterly amoral b**tard who is absolutely the last guy you would ever want to face in combat. Bruce Lee's characters had the common decency to simply kill you and move on, whereas Tsurugi would make his punishment of an opponent extremely personal, down to the point of tearing off pieces of their bodies. His fighting style is graceless but effective, and a lot easier for any of us who strove to match the grace of Bruce to appreciate. If you want to see ass-whuppin' administered with balletic grace and artistry, do not see this film. If you want to see a guy mercilessly whip truckloads of ass, then this is the movie for you!

In a nutshell: Terry tsurugi is a badass-for-hire who will take on any job if his price is met. Plotline #1 has Terry rescuing convicted karate murderer Junjo from his date with the hangman. When Terry relocates Junjo to Hong Kong so the Japanese police won't find him, Junjo's brother and sister show up and tell Terry that they can't afford to pay him the rest of the money they owe for their brother's escape. Tragedy results that will make Junjo Terry's bitterest enemy and will eventually see them in a final showdown where only one will survive.Plotline #2 sees Terry volunteering to bodyguard the heiress to an oil fortune who is being pressured by the Yakuza. Her uncle happens to be a Karate master who is the only man alive that Tsurugi respects, and by working for him, Terry makes an attempt at redeeming himself as a human being (well, sort of...). Terry tries to stay one step ahead of the Yakuza, and his efforts culminate in a literal bloodbath where he takes on about thirty goons and puts much foot to ass.

The two plotlines overlap wildly and the ass-whuppin' set-pieces are loads of violent fun. Chiba's intense performance is unlike any other character in the history of the genre. Mean, violent and downright reprehensible, THE STREETFIGHTER is a unique milestone in the martial arts movie genre. HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION.

Sonny Chiba is one of the very few martial-arts stars that has escaped Bruce Lee's shadow and this film shows you why. Though he wears dark clothes and is shirtless, (just like Lee), during some of the fight scenes, he still comes across as an original.

He's got screen presence to spare and his deadpan approach to the exaggerated violence and fight scenes makes this funny and a totally awesome guy movie with lots of blood, gore and fighting. The one thing that I thought was strange was the throaty, phlegm-sounding war-cry that Chiba and other karate masters use throughout the film, but even that grows on you.

I was inspired to watch this film when I saw short clips in "True Romance". The fight scene looked original, so I gave it a shot. Loved it.

How can you go wrong when the star of the films utters lines like, "Maybe some day we can hold a death match." and, after punching a guy in the back, "You'll be unconscious through lack of oxygen; it's an ancient technique."

And I really dig the roly-poly karate master who goes on to teach Chiba's character a few new things about fighting. How many times do you get to see an obviously overweight character show that being overweight doesn't prevent you from kicking ass?

The character of Ratnose does get overbearing after a while, but it's a small price to pay to watch Chiba play one of the coolest anti-heroes of all time.

"Become...a number one man!" and rent this movie. Pure 70s martial-arts cheese and ass kicking.

It's not the best martial arts film ever made, (that title, in my opinion, belongs to Enter The Dragon) but it definitely holds its own, especially when you compare it to the millions of crappy, overdubbed Kung Fu movies out there. What I liked best about the film was Tsurugi's in-it-for-the-money attitude. Aside from maybe Ratnose (did anyone else detect the slightest hint of sexual tension between Rat & Terry, or am I crazy?), Tsurugi cares about no one. He is, after all, "a number one man!" I know this bad anti-hero thing has been done to death, but Sonny Chiba is the best at what he does: whuppin' ass & lookin' cool.

The thing I didn't care too much for was Tsurugi's seeming ability to teleport wherever he needed to go. (Hong Kong! Tokyo! Jupiter!) Other than that minor inconsistency (remember, inconsistency is what makes a movie good, sometimes) I enjoyed this movie.

The Streetfighter remains one of the defining films of the Japanese martial arts, "grindhouse", "chop-socky" era from the 1970s. It's one of the titles that made Sonny Chiba famous and features really impressive high-level karate.

But the film isn't light-hearted, nor is it made humorous by its dub (as is the case with the contemporary Shaw Bros. films of the time). It is violent, gritty, misogynistic, and a bit racist. It explores gritty underworld elements: drug trafficking, sex slavery, contract killing, etc.

The plot revolves around Terry, an underground mercenary in modern Japan, who is forced into a life of crime (presumably) for being half-Chinese in a racist, conservative society. He is offered a job to rescue a wealthy oil baron's daughter-heiress after she is kidnapped by Yakuza. The way the events transpire and the plot develops is actually pretty solid for a "B" movie, and here Street Fighter stands far above its sequels or genre contemporaries.

Terry as a character is complex and depressing. He is angry and violent and completely unsympathetic to others, but he is the one we are supposed to connect with. Many people who cross his path are perhaps more upstanding people but are killed either because they are in the way of his contract jobs or because they are not as equally driven by hatred.

Sure, maybe it's a character study or a commentary on Japanese society in post-World War II. But that's only in hind-sight and even if so, it's just icing. The premise of the movie is to create a situation for Sonny Chiba to kill a bunch of violent criminals while on commission. But this is okay, because the acting is good, the martial arts are real good, the music is catchy funk-inspired rock and enka from the '70s, and the plot maintains your attention throughout.