Return of the Street Fighter

Rating:
Summary: 4 Stars For Film; -3 For VHS
Review: It's too bad New Line didn't release this as an unrated cut, just like they did with the first film, 'The Street Fighter'. This VHS version is not only full-frame, but HEAVILY edited. No blood, not even a crunching bone sound. But you still get to see some breasts. Strange that they didn't edit them out either. If you get the recent DVD versions of the film by companies like Front Row Entertainment and Brentwood, you'll get to see the uncut version in it's widescreen glory. Sadly, the image quality is poor, since it was taken from the laserdisc version of the film.
As for the film itself, there are better Sonny Chiba films with great storylines and good acting, such as Killing Machine and Champion of Death. Interestingly, those two films has weak fighting choreography, while Return Of The Street Fighter is the opposite - poor acting, poor story, but great fight choreography. It's too bad that New Line Cinema has not treated this film or any of the other Chiba films it owns with respect by releasing them uncut on DVD with the original Japanese audio, and allowing inferior bootlegs to flood the market. While the Street Fighter films are not exactly works of art, they deserve to be seen in widescreen and gore intact, especially in light of the recent success of Kill Bill, a film that took gore to the extreme a la Japanese action cinema. Perhaps one day New Line will get its act together and realize that all the money the bootleggers have been getting out of their DVD sales could have been going to them all along.

Rating:
Summary: 4 Stars For Film; -3 For VHS
Review: It's too bad New Line didn't release this as an unrated cut, just like they did with the first film, 'The Street Fighter'. This VHS version is not only full-frame, but HEAVILY edited. No blood, not even a crunching bone sound. But you still get to see some breasts. Strange that they didn't edit them out either. If you get the recent DVD versions of the film by companies like Front Row Entertainment and Brentwood, you'll get to see the uncut version in it's widescreen glory. Sadly, the image quality is poor, since it was taken from the laserdisc version of the film.
As for the film itself, there are better Sonny Chiba films with great storylines and good acting, such as Killing Machine and Champion of Death. Interestingly, those two films has weak fighting choreography, while Return Of The Street Fighter is the opposite - poor acting, poor story, but great fight choreography. It's too bad that New Line Cinema has not treated this film or any of the other Chiba films it owns with respect by releasing them uncut on DVD with the original Japanese audio, and allowing inferior bootlegs to flood the market. While the Street Fighter films are not exactly works of art, they deserve to be seen in widescreen and gore intact, especially in light of the recent success of Kill Bill, a film that took gore to the extreme a la Japanese action cinema. Perhaps one day New Line will get its act together and realize that all the money the bootleggers have been getting out of their DVD sales could have been going to them all along.

Rating:
Summary: Good Sequel
Review: Not as bad as previous reviewers would have you think & the fullframe version is actually the edited version, whereas the widescreen letterboxed version is uncut. Worth a watch for Chiba/"StreetFighter" fans.

Rating:
Summary: The second in the trilogy.
Review: Some sequils are pathetic and horrable. This was just as good as the first. Sonny Chiba returns as Terry Tsurugi and he his just as deadly in this one as he was in the first. When Terry Tsurugi refuses one assignment for the mob they try to stop him. Of course the key word is try. Once again he comes out on top. Get the whole... trilogy.

Rating:
Summary: Shigehiro Ozawa's Return of the Street Fighter
Review: Sonny Chiba is back as Terry Sugury, a hired killer for a business tycoon who is building a giant karate academy. Chiba dabbles in the hitman trade, while his old karate instructor finds out the tycoon is using the instructor's name to procure "donations" for the mob. After an honest cop is killed and the instructor injured in a hit, Chiba contorts himself ... all over the tycoon, the mafia, and an old villain we thought was dead in the first film.

This film is definitely an improvement over the original "The Street Fighter," whose plot I was never able to figure out. Chiba does that thing where he calls up inner strength through breathing exercises in the middle of some fights. They call it inner strength ... . Someone must have let the producers knows this was kind of funny in the first film because it is kept to a minimum here. Sadly, Chiba is also saddled with yet another "funny" sidekick, this time a young woman who speaks like a hippie.

There are a few major fight set pieces here, with the best being a chaotic fight at a spa, just ignore the weak comedy relief in the form of a whiny fat guy (no, not me). I do recommend this film over the first one and I recommend it to any martial arts fans.

This was Japanese dubbed into English and is rated (R) for physical violence, gun violence, gore, some profanity, brief female nudity, and mild sexual content.