"If you've got to fight, fight dirty!!!"

dee.reid

Sonny Chiba has been described by some as an anti-Bruce Lee and I agree, but to a certain extent. You see, it's not really fair considering that Lee is dead, they both hail from separate nationalities, represent different martial arts ideals (Lee founded Jeet Kune Do, Chiba was a mean karate machine), and Chiba has demonstrated he can more than hold his own against the disposable bad guys sent in his direction. Like Christian Slater's character described in "True Romance" (1993) regarding Chiba's "The Street Fighter" (1974), "he's just a bad motherf**ker, he gets paid by people to f**k guys up." Directed by Shigehiro Ozawa, Sonny Chiba's Terry Tsurugi is that lethal, that ruthless, that dirty a fighter. He's a one-man hit-squad, paid by gangsters to spring a condemned fighter from prison but when his price gets too high on his next assignment - a kidnapping - he's forced to make his hands and feet do the talking. The action in "The Street Fighter" is fairly gruesome, allowing it to become the first film to be rated "X" for violence in the United States. He pokes eyes, kicks feet, slaps around women, rips out tonsils (and other choice body parts), targets the solar plexus, and throws dudes out of top-floor windows. I loved it from start to finish, and it's easy to why it's so beloved to Quentin Tarantino.

10/10

score 10/10

dee.reid 6 February 2006

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1285042/