Develiker terrible... so disappointed.

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Nick Retzlaff This time I'll talk about a film in the public domain, at least I think it is, called The Street Fighter. It's not that movie based on the video game but a series of grindhouse action films by Sonny Chiba. Before being in Kill Bill he was doing action movies in the 1970's and is considered the Steven Segal of Japan at the time. In The Street Fighter Sonny Chiba plays a mercenary named "Terry" for the yakuza.After doing a favor for the yakuza by saving a death row prisoner. When a rich guy dies and leaves all of his fortune to his daughter in Japan the yakuza order Terry to kidnap her. Terry refuses because he wanted more money and then the yakuza end up ordering to kill him. There's also a fight scene where Terry fights a martial arts master at a dojo and has a change of heart at the end of the fight. He ends up protecting her at his service free of charge. There's even a subplot where there's these people out to get him for being half Chinese.This was also Quentin Tarantino's inspiration to do films when he saw this in theaters back in the 1970's.

SnakesOnAnAfricanPlain Superb action film that is superior to all recent efforts. The Street Fighter is everything you should love about the genre. In fact, it does so much right, it should be used as a template for any film wishing to achieve such levels of excitement and brutality. The first thing to grab my attention was the lead protagonist. He isn't exactly a nice guy. Far from it. He's a mercenary for hire, and not the lovable rogue like Han Solo. He is sadistic and cruel and self serving. However, Chiba manages to instill such charisma that I was drawn to the performance. As the film progressed, so did Chiba. His actions became more heroic, even if his methods could still make me cringe. The action scenes are those I long to return. This isn't some "exciting" frenetic exercise in editing. The action derives from the actors and the stunts. The camera is following what is going on, and heavy editing is not needed. There are some stylistic flourishes which add extra cool, but not so much as to detract from the emotions of the characters. Some parts are a little convoluted, but the balance between story, dialog, and action is beautifully thought out. It's all helped along by a very 70's and very sexy soundtrack.

sc8031 The Streetfighter remains one of the defining films of the Japanese martial arts, "grindhouse", "chop-socky" era from the 1970s. It's one of the titles that made Sonny Chiba famous and features really impressive high-level karate.But the film isn't light-hearted, nor is it made humorous by its dub (as is the case with the contemporary Shaw Bros. films of the time). It is violent, gritty, misogynistic, and a bit racist. It explores gritty underworld elements: drug trafficking, sex slavery, contract killing, etc.The plot revolves around Terry, an underground mercenary in modern Japan, who is forced into a life of crime (presumably) for being half-Chinese in a racist, conservative society. He is offered a job to rescue a wealthy oil baron's daughter-heiress after she is kidnapped by Yakuza. The way the events transpire and the plot develops is actually pretty solid for a "B" movie, and here Street Fighter stands far above its sequels or genre contemporaries.Terry as a character is complex and depressing. He is angry and violent and completely unsympathetic to others, but he is the one we are supposed to connect with. Many people who cross his path are perhaps more upstanding people but are killed either because they are in the way of his contract jobs or because they are not as equally driven by hatred.Sure, maybe it's a character study or a commentary on Japanese society in post-World War II. But that's only in hind-sight and even if so, it's just icing. The premise of the movie is to create a situation for Sonny Chiba to kill a bunch of violent criminals while on commission. But this is okay, because the acting is good, the martial arts are real good, the music is catchy funk-inspired rock and enka from the '70s, and the plot maintains your attention throughout.

lastliberal Sonny Chiba shows up early giving the last rights to a guy on death row – the 'last Okinawa karate master' actually. He gives him the means to escape. Maybe he's a good guy. but I doubt it. Chiba just looks mean and ugly. He certainly isn't the Jet Li type.But, we soon find he is a thug-for-hire as the brother and sister show up and they are light in the cash they owe him. brother goes out the window and sister gets sold as a sex slave.This guy is so bad that he can walk out on the Yakusa. He will join any side that pays him more. What a sweetheart! The film gets gorier and gorier from here. This is the first film in the US to get a X or violence, so expect to seem lots of blood.There are a lot of interesting characters, and lots of fighting, and lots of ...well, I guess you can expect that from a street fighter.