Champion of Death

Rating:
Summary: Sonny Chiba, master of Karate, or master of livestock?
Review: "Champion of Death" chronicles the life of a hero by the same name. Sonny Chiba brings an inspiring performance of a lifetime in a movie that keeps audiences coming back asking, "What just happenned?". The depth of his character pulling beyond the cliche roles of karate masters that Sonny is often cast. He now portrays teacher, serogate father, farmer, and evil rapist. The film climaxes as Sonny, in a drunken stupor kills a man only to find that his "fists of fury" carry consequences and that some people you maliciously kill have families. Families who become quite hungry when there is no father to bring home food. The film answers the questions other martial arts films have neglected. It also helped Sonny Chiba to finally be recognized by the Hollywood Walk of Fame, that is the walk of fame in our hearts.

Rating:
Summary: Champion of Death
Review: Champion of Death is one of the best action films you will ever see.It's true.Period.Story is based not only on life of Oyama Masutatsu,few episodes taken from tales about Miyamoto Musashi.
Cinematography is good.Stylish and expressive.Fights not to modern taste,but great!You can't go wrong with this movie.Watch it.It's has real kyokushinkai masters after all,do you need something more??!!

Rating:
Summary: Not his best
Review: Not a very good movie. I've seen a lot of martial arts movies, so I'm used to the crazy story lines, but this one was pretty bad. The action was okay, but I got a headache watching the scene where Sonny fights the bull. They tried to make it so you were right there in the action, but the result is just a long segment of very jerky shots, which got annoying after awhile. The transfer was pretty poor, so the picture isn't really that good. If you really want to see Sonny Chiba in action, doing what he does best, get the Streetfighter series. With a title like Champions of Death, I expected to see more action.

Rating:
Summary: Not his best
Review: Not a very good movie. I've seen a lot of martial arts movies, so I'm used to the crazy story lines, but this one was pretty bad. The action was okay, but I got a headache watching the scene where Sonny fights the bull. They tried to make it so you were right there in the action, but the result is just a long segment of very jerky shots, which got annoying after awhile. The transfer was pretty poor, so the picture isn't really that good. If you really want to see Sonny Chiba in action, doing what he does best, get the Streetfighter series. With a title like Champions of Death, I expected to see more action.

Rating:
Summary: Mas Oyama's life story
Review: Sonny Chiba is both an accomplished actor and martial artist. He holds dan rank in both Kyokushin karate and Nippon Shorinji Kempo.

Back in the 70's Chiba made two biographical films about the life of the founder's of each of those arts. The film about So Doshin, founder of Shorinji Kempo, was released in the U.S. with the idiotic title "The Killing Machine." A terrible misnomer about the life of a truly great man who was anything but a killer or a machine.

Chiba's film about Sosai Mas Oyama, founder of Kyokushin karate, is equally mistitled here as "Champion of Death." I believe I read somewhere that the film was also released in English under a different, and equally silly, title called "The God Hand."

Of the two films, the one about Master So Doshin is the better of the lot, but fans of Karate generally and of Oyama karate in particular will not want to be without "Champion of Death."
There is actual footage at the beginning of the film of a Japanese Kyokushin training class on a beach, and there is even a 10-15 second close up of Sosai himself executing Seiken tsuki!

Chiba does a reasonably good job with portraying Oyama's life, though I suspect some of this is embellished (the rape scene, I hope!) for cinematic purposes.

My one complaint is that although the DVD is dubbed into English, there are several places where Japanese signs or texts are shown that are crucial to scenes in the film but they are left untranslated and unspoken in English.

Rating:
Summary: sonny chiba?, more like sonny delight!
Review: sonny chiba portraits a war-veteran, karate master, and rapist. rapist? yes, rapist. that's our hero ladies and gentlemen. but don't worry he says he's sorry. to prove it he kills an angry bull with his bare hands in what could be considered the greatest fight of all time. so if you ever become desperate enough to watch this movie, you'll love it as much as I do.

Rating:
Summary: sonny chiba?, more like sonny delight!
Review: sonny chiba portraits a war-veteran, karate master, and rapist. rapist? yes, rapist. that's our hero ladies and gentlemen. but don't worry he says he's sorry. to prove it he kills an angry bull with his bare hands in what could be considered the greatest fight of all time. so if you ever become desperate enough to watch this movie, you'll love it as much as I do.