The Street Fighter

Rating:
Summary: Sonny Chiba kicks... and takes names. Part 1
Review: When I first heard of the Street Fighter I was skeptical. I saw this DVD and it was cool. It had Soony Chiba as a hired help named Terry Tsurugi. When Terry finds out that he was used by the Yakuza(Japanese Mafia), they try to stop him at all costs. Easier said than done, Terry kicks the living daylightrs out of every body that gets in his way even knoking out one guy's teeth,ripping out a guy's viocebox, and tearing off another guy's balls. To put it plainly Chiba is a more vicious Bruce Lee. The visions of him ripping his enemy's limbs off are cool. He teaches the Yakuza a lesson they won't sure forget. No gang can take on Terry and survive. Beat him if you can, survive if he lets you, which he rarely does. This is not for the weak of heart. Fans of Bruce Lee will surely become fans of Sonny Chiba. I highly recomend this movie. The origional Street Fighter was rated X when it was first realesed in the U.S.

Rating:
Summary: Over The Top Violence Masks Poor Production Quality
Review: When THE STREET FIGHTER was first released in the United States in 1976, no one had ever heard of its martial arts star, Sonny Chiba. Comparisons with Bruce Lee were inevitable, but whereas Lee made his mark with rapid punches and kicks, Chiba made his with an odd mixture of deep breathing and straight-ahead jabs and eye-piercing pokes. The plot is minimal: Chiba is a free-lance hired thug who is paid to spring another thug who is set for execution. Chiba does this, but his employers refuse to pay off, with predicably bloody consequences for them. Instead, they offer him yet another deal to safeguard the pretty daughter of an industrialist. At this point, the plot becomes a blurry mess in which cause and effect become locked in a closed loop. I simply could not make sense out of who was doing what to whom. About all that I was sure of was that Chiba, with his lust for blood, was one real bad dude who not only defeated his opponents but also maimed them. Part of my problem, I think, was not due solely to an unintelligible script, but also to a sound track that muffled each word of dialogue that was the verbal equivalent of an equally muffled script. The power of THE STREET FIGHTER is due only to the graphic mayhem sequences that show how Chiba's punching bags spit out sugar cubes for teeth and tomato sauce for blood. There was one truly innovative scene in which Chiba punches downward into some luckless opponent's skull so that the viewer is treated to an X-ray slide of that fist bashing its way into the cranium. THE STREET FIGHTER was sufficiently different from its contemporaries in that it set a new standard for mayhem that Quentin Tarantino found bravura enough to later emulate in his homage to the chop-socky genre with KILL BILL. A quarter century perspective between my first viewing of THE STREET FIGHTER and now suggests that this film is remarkable only in that it opened new pathways for what was even then the start of a slowly stagnating cycle of cinematic vengeance.

Rating:
Summary: Over The Top Violence Masks Poor Production Quality
Review: When THE STREET FIGHTER was first released in the United States in 1976, no one had ever heard of its martial arts star, Sonny Chiba. Comparisons with Bruce Lee were inevitable, but whereas Lee made his mark with rapid punches and kicks, Chiba made his with an odd mixture of deep breathing and straight-ahead jabs and eye-piercing pokes. The plot is minimal: Chiba is a free-lance hired thug who is paid to spring another thug who is set for execution. Chiba does this, but his employers refuse to pay off, with predicably bloody consequences for them. Instead, they offer him yet another deal to safeguard the pretty daughter of an industrialist. At this point, the plot becomes a blurry mess in which cause and effect become locked in a closed loop. I simply could not make sense out of who was doing what to whom. About all that I was sure of was that Chiba, with his lust for blood, was one real bad dude who not only defeated his opponents but also maimed them. Part of my problem, I think, was not due solely to an unintelligible script, but also to a sound track that muffled each word of dialogue that was the verbal equivalent of an equally muffled script. The power of THE STREET FIGHTER is due only to the graphic mayhem sequences that show how Chiba's punching bags spit out sugar cubes for teeth and tomato sauce for blood. There was one truly innovative scene in which Chiba punches downward into some luckless opponent's skull so that the viewer is treated to an X-ray slide of that fist bashing its way into the cranium. THE STREET FIGHTER was sufficiently different from its contemporaries in that it set a new standard for mayhem that Quentin Tarantino found bravura enough to later emulate in his homage to the chop-socky genre with KILL BILL. A quarter century perspective between my first viewing of THE STREET FIGHTER and now suggests that this film is remarkable only in that it opened new pathways for what was even then the start of a slowly stagnating cycle of cinematic vengeance.

Rating:
Summary: Best martial arts film I've seen in a good while
Review: You know you've found a unique movie when you seen people's heads get crushed from an x-ray point of view. This thing is just too cool!! SO different from normal kung fu flicks. Yes it suffers from the normal karate movie downfalls (no plot, bad dialogue, horrific acting); but it shines in the parts that count: the fighting. Sonny Chiba knows his stuff and messes up A LOT of people in this one. Neat ending; followed by Return of the Street Fighter and Sister Street Fighter, both a far cry from the original.