Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Nonureva Really Surprised!

Stephan Hammond It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Kirandeep Yoder The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Prismark10 I only heard of Sonny Chiba via the film True Romance and Quentin Tarantino being a big fan of him. Chiba appeared in the Kill Bill films.However this movie is not a good introduction to Sonny Chiba. Karate Kiba is a recut version of The Bodyguard made a few years earlier.The film opens with a narration that was ripped off by Tarantino for Pulp Fiction. The path of the righteous man.... as spoken by Samuel L Jackson.We first see Chiba taking down a plane hijacking. We then see him offering to take down Japanese drug gangs and offers to become the personal bodyguard of anyone who has the information to take them down. A woman who claims to have valuable information steps forward but she has something to hide and Chiba and her always get into trouble with the Yakuza which leads to some martial arts action.However the film is badly dubbed, poorly edited, the version I saw even had nudity pixelated. The script is rather pedestrian and the film even for a karate action film is rather disappointing despite the opening narration which offers a lot more than we actually get.

lemon_magic The best thing you can say about this movie is that if you are a fan of Sonny Chiba, this movie gives you lots of him. Chiba makes speeches; Chiba poses; Chiba sneers; Chiba glares at the camera; Chiba punches and kicks the living sushi out of a whole bunch of bad guys; Chiba sits around on couches and chairs and looks thoughtful/pensive; Chiba drives his car...I enjoy Chiba as an actor and a martial artist...but even for a Chiba fan, this movie may have a little too much Sonny Chiba. It's obviously something of a vanity vehicle for him. And no, I wouldn't put "Street Fighter" in the same category, because in "SF" he plays a ruthless, amoral anti-hero and he shares the camera with an intriguing cast of friends and foes. Here, he's front and center almost all the time, and he tries to be Batman, Captain America and Bruce Lee rolled into one. Toshiro Mifune and Chow Yun Fat couldn't pull this off for the length of an entire feature film, and Sonny just kind of wears out his welcome. At least he could have changed out of his suit once in a while.The movie is further messed up by an entirely gratuitous and badly done introductory sequence (apparently tacked on to the front of the film for the American version) and a goofy cheer "("Viva!! Chiba!! Viva!! Chiba!!) that starts things on the wrong foot. There is some astoundingly amateurish and inappropriate dubbing - Sonny (or his usual English stand-in) apparently couldn't be bothered to do the vocals for the American version, so they got some poor dope with an entirely different and smoother voice and dialect that is quite jarring coming from the face we all know and love from "Street Fighter". Even with all those flaws and the overexposure, this could still be a minor classic, but the camera work and the fight scenes are hopelessly cheesy. I'm willing to believe that Karate actually works if someone as amazing as Chiba's character is supposed to be does it, but the director and cameraman hedged their bets by chopping and editing fight scenes with a weed whacker so you can't really see what's going on most of the time. It's not all bad: there are some decent shots and compositions, and there's at least one memorable and nightmarish moment when the bad guys appear in the client's bedroom in a genuinely inventive way. And as for the actual plot...forget it. For a "bodyguard", Chiba's character is something of an idiot. The screenplay depends on his making mistakes and oversights that repeatedly place him (and his "client") in perilous situations so he can fight his way out of them, and after 30 minutes, it strains even the most credulous judgment to think that this guy is supposed to be any good. (Also, If his character was really out to destroy the Japanese drug trade, he'd have taken his client by her neck 10 minutes into the screenplay and shaken her until her teeth chattered like a castanet until she spilled her little secrets...and a whole lot of pointless death and conflict would have been avoided.) Still, as a whole this movie is a long way from the bottom of the barrel. It's still Sonny Chiba, and he's still fun to watch. I paid a buck to get this off the bargain DVD rack at a local mega mart, and I feel it was worth watching once.

Mike P I liked Chiba in Street Fighter, and I figured hey, no matter how stupid this movie will be, I'll at least get to see him kick some ass, right? Wrong. This is a dull, dreary mess of pointless talking, half-assed scriptwriting and meaningless scheming. There are few action scenes of any kind, even fewer martial arts scenes, and the few that are are shot and edited so poorly that you can't even make out what in the world is going on. The dub is also atrocious, and perhaps the idiocy that is this movie is best illustrated by the fact that it prominently features the *Italian* Mafia... but they're all played by *Japanese* actors! Avoid like the plague--you would see better martial arts by looking through the window of your local preschool karate class for five minutes.

Johann This flick is kinda boring. The beginning should be a flash-back to Pulp Fiction (Sonny Chiba reads the Ezekial 25:17 quote). This is probably the coolest thing in this damn movie. Let me get this out of the way, I am a Sonny Chiba fan. However, even Sonny's karate strikes couldn't save this bore.Sonny plays himself (or some character with his name, it's never really explained). He offers his services up to anyone who is interested in taking on the drug syndicate in Tokyo. OK, thus far things sound alright. The problem is that the film drags on for at least 45 minutes before we start to realize where the plot is going and who the girl he is guarding is. When the action finally comes, don't expect Streetfighter like, fast paced, karate action. There isn't even the gratuitous gore or sarcastic one liners.Overall, Sonny's performance isn't bad, but this movie is hardly a good vehicle for his talents.