This guy has to be one of the biggest anti heroes in martial arts movies – Sonny Chiba!
“If you’ve got to fight – fight dirty!”
The classic tagline behind this film that really sums up Sonny’s approach to fights in this movie! This movie is about Takuma Tsurugi (Chiba) – a Karate master and mercenary.
With little conscience Tsurugi will go to any length to have his debts payed back to him, and fears absolutely no one.
When meeting to carry out a mission to kidnap a wealthy heiress, he asks for more money than the employers feel is reasonable and walks out. Fearing he knows too much the employers send people out to kill Tsurugi (unsuccessfully). He then (just to smite them) decides to fight against them by protecting the heiress.
He approaches the heiress and her group and auditions for the job by breaking in and attacking her! He uses this as an example of how easy it would be to get to her, and convinces them that he is just as bad as they are, and that he understands how they’ll approach the situation.
He is then hired and the whole fiasco begins.
Tsurugi’s attitude
This guy basically believes he’s the toughest and most bad ass guy around, and he may be right.
At the beginning of the film a man and woman raise enough money for the advance so Tsurugi could rescue their brother from execution in prison. They plead quite innocently with him (as they don’t have the money to pay him back) to overlook the debt since they only did what they could to rescue their brother. Of course, Tsurugi attacks them and one even ends up dead!
A truly selfish character, but for some reason you can’t help but love the attitude!
Sonny Chiba rips a guys nuts off
It doesn’t matter how much pain you put Tsurugi through, he simply shrugs it off and keeps fighting, and fighting dirty. This is best demonstrated when he defends Sarai (the heiress) from rape by punching her would-be-rapist in the junk before tearing it completely off!
This guy is one mean bastard! 🙂
The Violence
Apparently this was the first movie to given an ‘X’ certificate due to the severity of the violence. You’ve got throats being ripped out, eyes and as mentioned before – genitalia. This is as vicious as they come.
Sonny Chiba’s character just comes across as no nonsense, in a “what ever you do to me I’ll do more” approach to his fights, ruthlessly bashing anyone who gets in his way – yet somehow he still comes across as the good guy!
This movie has no nudity, but it does have blatant rape attempts, with as many as 5 or 6 people pushing one girl to the floor in one scene and ripping off her clothes – it does kind of match the gritty style of the movie but is a bit much and doesn’t really serve any purpose except to demonstrate how horrible such a situation could be.
The Martial Arts & Fights
I knew this was a Japanese movie and I expected a karate style – but I still was amazed just how pure karate some of the fights seem to be! The traditional blocks and punches of Karate are clearly used in this film, with Chiba often using a low stance quite effectively.
A lot of the fights are a bit stop and go, demonstrating technique quite clearly but it the pace does change here and there. The fight scenes demonstrate big powerful blows as opposed to the speed and pace of Hong Kong films – a noticeable difference in martial arts style as one of Karate’s philosophies is to defeat an opponent with one solid, powerful strike. This philosophy seems to be present in the style of the fights, even if that strike is ripping out someone’s throat!
Overall I’d say the fights are done pretty well, but the extreme level of the violence really makes it unique.
Would I recommend it?
This one is entirely up to you! It’s not a bad movie, but you have to like the extreme violence and ‘pull no punches’ nature of the fight scenes. This movie really is as gritty as it comes, so if you’re not into seeing that in a movie – skip this one.
Otherwise if you can handle the gore and violence it may be for you.
Find It On DVD –
Region 1 (US & Canada)
The Street Fighter on DVD
Region 2 (UK, Europe, etc)
The Streetfighter on DVD
