Sonny Chiba may not be as much an international household name as Bruce Lee, but it’s difficult to imagine another titan of the martial arts genre as equally defined by physical presence and powerhouse charisma. Even in earlier notable roles – fighting back-to-back with Meiko Kaji in Wandering Ginza Butterfly, erupting with ambitious wrath in Battles Without Honor and Humanity – he exuded power and intimidating poise. But no role or movie better captures that Chiba intensity than his landmark 1974 action exploitation The Street Fighter.
In the space of 90 minutes, underworld mercenary Takuma Tsurugi shatters teeth, tears out a throat and caves in a skull with his fist so hard that the film cuts to its infamous X-Ray shot to show the damage. Sonny Chiba radiates the kind of unstoppable aura that defined figures like Bruce Lee and Point Blank’s Lee Marvin, but instead of grace and honor, his antihero is a man as vicious as other movies’ villains. Tsurugi rains violence upon all in his path, be it hapless yakuza or his own clients who can’t pay up. He sells a woman into prostitution as reprisal, sneering in the process. He’s a fascinating bastard of a protagonist, clad in black and armored with gauntlets, animalistic, driven by his own code and his alone.
For all its gory karate violence, what still surprises about The Street Fighter is how director Shigehiro Ozawa succinctly establishes a heightened corner of the Japanese underworld. Amid the action, the plot succinctly weaves a canvas of old allies and Yakuza intrigue, rival schools and secret techniques. A seething hatred for Yakuza and organized crime drives his antihero on a rollicking mission to protect an oil empire heiress, while vengeful forces scheme on the fringes. The brisk pace, interweaving plots, and exaggerated aspects capture the vibe of manga adaptations such as the Lone Wolf & Cub films or Golgo 13, especially once the super-assassins are on the prowl. Tsurugi battling a Zatoichi-esque blind swordsman in a modern dockyard encapsulates that larger-than-life atmosphere perfectly.
But Sonny Chiba’s mammoth presence towers over all. His karate choreography is an act of concussive force, a hissing fuse and contracting sinewy spring that explodes into crippling impacts. No elegance, just pure sledgehammer power: every attack commits to bone-snapping savagery. Where Bruce Lee exuded confident swagger, Chiba’s antihero radiates primal wrath. The Street Fighter’s action isn’t choreographed to make Chiba look like the meanest badass to ever walk the streets of Tokyo. Why waste time in an extended fight of acrobatic maneuvers when you can break bones and gouge eyes? The Street Fighter meshes the messy mayhem of the street brawl with the ruthless finality of Chiba’s martial art skills, building to a freighter assault beneath a storming sky that leaves waves of yakuza goons broken and bloody. It’s perhaps no surprise then, that this was the first X-rated film upon its release in the US purely for its wild violence.
Sonny Chiba would reprise the role in two more sequels, as well as play similar characters in the (even more absurdly bonkers) spin-off series Sister Street Fighter. His fearsome wrath would appear again and again through the decades, whether fighting rampage beasts in Karate Bullfighter or fighting rival wolfmen in Wolf Guy. But The Street Fighter arguably remains his most enduring legacy, and remains a delightfully over-the-top rush of Japanese action carnage nearly 50 years later.
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