The Street Fighter (1974) - A Review

 

The Street Fighter is an incredibly violent cult classic martial arts film.

The Street Fighter (also known as Gekitotsu! Satsujin ken and Kung Fu Streetfighter) is a martial arts movie released in Japan in 1974, starring Sonny Chiba, Goichi Yamada, Masashi Ishibashi, Yutaka Nakajima, Etsuko Shihomi, Jirō Yabuki,and Rinichi Yamamoto. The Street Fighter was directed by Shigehiro Ozawa, with fight direction by Tsutomu Harada, Reggy Jones, and Ken Kazama.

Sonny Chiba as Takuma Tsurugi. Do not mess with him!

In The Street Fighter, Sonny Chiba plays Takuma Tsurugi, an assassin for hire who is highly proficient in martial arts. At the start of the movie, Tsurugi uses a martial arts technique to free a prisoner (played by Masashi Ishibashi) on death row. When he gets back home, the brother (played by Jiro Yabuki) and the sister Nachi (played by Etsuko Shihomi) of the prisoner come to Tsurugi's apartment to see their brother and to ask for more time to pay off the fee. Tsurugi informs them that he sent their brother out of the country, and he wants the full payment now. Naturally, they fight, and the brother dies during the altercation. Nachi is sold into prostitution after that.

The Yakuza capture Tsurugi at one point. How he is able to escape has severe repercussions...

Takuma Tsurugi is not a good guy. Later on, he gets a meeting with some shady business people who want to hire him to kidnap Sarai Chuayut-Hammett (played by Yutaka Nakajima), the daughter of a recently deceased billionaire oil tycoon. Tsurugi refuses the assignment once he finds out they are Yakuza. From there, The Yakuza plan to kill Tsurugi and kidnap Sarai themselves.

Tsurugi goes to the martial arts dojo Sarai's uncle runs to offer his services to protect Sarai. After fighting the martial arts students there and the master, we learn a little about Takuma Tsurugi's origins and why he fights the way he does. The uncle agrees to hire Tsurugi, and from there Tsurugi and his partner Rakuda (played by Goichi Yamada), have several run ins with Yakuza assassins while trying to protect Sarai. The prisoner who Tsurugi got out of prison also has a part in all of this. Can Tsurugi protect Sarai from the Yakuza, and avoid being killed himself?

You back a wild dog into a corner, he gon' bite.

The Street Fighter is a cult classic martial arts movie that has left a lasting legacy. When it got released in the United States, it got an X rating for the violence in it! Reading/hearing about some of the things that happens in this movie made me avoid it like the plague whenever I saw it for sale at the specialty video stores I used to go to. I am not against extreme violence, it's just not something I seek out (unless it was pro wrestling back in the day). The first time I was able to watch The Street Fighter (or at least part of it) was on broadcast TV about ten years ago! They blurred one particularly graphic (and famous) scene. Seeing what The Street Fighter was like for myself, I finally put it on my list of 'Need To Watch Movies'.

The plot, as I summarized it above, may seem a bit thin, but there is actually some depth to it. There's more to the story than I summarized, and it goes to some unexpected places. To me, the plot was very shonen manga-like, in a good way. I could actually imagine The Street Fighter as a manga or an anime. In some ways, Takuma Tsurugi reminds me of Kenshiro from Fist Of The North Star. Sonny Chiba is amazing in this movie. Takuma Tsurugi is an antihero with principles. He really does not tolerate organized crime syndicates. He does what he does for money, and he is loyal (if you show loyalty to him). The way Tsurugi fights is wild. He fights to maim, to kill, and to destroy. He has a simmering rage inside, and that helps him in his line of work. Sonny Chiba was the perfect guy to play Tsurugi. If anyone else played him the way Chiba played him, I don't think The Street Fighter would be taken as seriously as it is (to martial arts movie fans, at least). Also very cool that Etsuko Shihomi has a part in this. She plays a strong woman who gets beaten down by men in her life, both literally and figuratively. Her self sacrifice is admirable. Masashi Ishibashi as the freed prisoner is great as the tortured enigma who is completely focused on revenge.

Seek and destroy seems to be Takuma Tsurugi's motto.

The action in The Street Fighter is extreme! Sonny Chiba fights like a wild animal; punching, kicking, gouging, and tearing out whatever he can to win the fight. Sonny Chiba is a snarling, spitting beast as he fights. Blood spurts out frequently in this movie. Sonny Chiba even tears out body parts of his opponents to win. There is the famous scene of him giving a rapist what he deserves, and another famous scene that shows the X-ray effect of punching a man's skull, then the bloody aftermath. I'm trying not to go into too much detail, as these scenes come out of nowhere and are quite shocking if you aren't expecting them. Really, the violent bloodiness reminds me of the Lone Wolf and Cub movies (and of the American edited version of it, Shogun Assassin). The fight scenes are...okay. They aren't intricately choreographed like in Hong Kong martial arts movies, but the fight scenes are still fun.

In conclusion, I highly recommend watching The Street Fighter. If you want extreme violence with your fight scenes, this is the movie for you! Sonny Chiba's performance is amazing, and totally memorable. The plot is interesting, and even has a few twists. The music in this is great as well, with the main theme almost sounding like it's from the the soundtrack of Shaft! Check out this classic movie and be amazed! And hey, you can say you watched an X-rated movie and not feel like a perv for admitting to it!

Reviewed by David Williams