The Street Fighter: TOEI/ New Line Cinema Rating: USA: X (original theatrical release)
After the early and unexpected death of Bruce Lee, Asian filmmakers scrambled to find the next martial arts superstar. Lee had brought mainstream popularity to chop socky flicks here in America, and producers didn’t want to let the genre’s popularity wane with the superstar’s passing. This led to a spate of films starring what Bey Logan (who authored the book Hong Kong Action Cinema) ever so cleverly termed ‘Bruce Lee-a-likes’. These actors (Bruce Le, Bruce Li, Bruce Liang, Bruce Leung, Dragon Lee, Conan Lee, etc) were chosen to star in kung fu exploitation films mainly because they resembled Lee in appearance. However, audiences weren’t so easily duped into accepting these imitations as a worthy successor to the real thing.
So, the world needed a new martial arts superhero. And while one who could live up to Lee’s legacy has never really materialized (even in today’s market—Jackie Chan spends more time being funny than tough, Jet Li has some excellent skills, but not enough charisma), the search for a new successor brought to light one Sonny Chiba. Chiba had been acting in Japan since the late 1950’s, but it was his appearance in the 1974 cult exploitation classic, The Street Fighter that brought him worldwide attention.
Normally, this is the point of the review where I’d regale you with a brief plot synopsis. However, this film doesn’t have much of a plot, so the synopsis will essentially be a sentence: Tough guy mercenary Terry Tsurugi (Sonny Chiba) and his goofy sidekick Ratnose must protect a Japanese oil baroness (who’s recently inherited her fortune) from evil members of the Yakuza and the American mafia who are bent on stealing it from her. Sure, there’s some weird subplot about a convicted murderer that Terry breaks out of jail in the beginning and battles to the death at the climax, but really, everything in this film exists simply as an excuse to get Chiba from one fight scene to the next. If you’re looking for a well-developed story, look elsewhere.
The Street Fighter hasn’t aged particularly well, although you can still see its influence in several modern films (like The Story of Riki and even Jet Li’s Romeo Must Die). Part of the problem is in the presentation of the martial arts sequences themselves. The fight sequences are basically a double-edged sword in this film—they’re the one thing that actually makes the film watchable, but they’re also ponderous and laughable in many instances. Martial arts fight choreography has come a long way from the 1970’s, yet this film doesn’t even really measure up with films from the same time period (a la Enter the Dragon). The main flaw is that Chiba constantly stops in mid-fight to refocus his ‘chi’ (spiritual energy) before executing his next attack. That’s not a bad thing, necessarily, except that when he does this, he makes this weird hissing noise that sounds like he’s having an asthma attack, preparing to cough up a wad of phlegm, or in desperate need of the Heimlich maneuver. After awhile, it becomes sort of a running gag—you could make a drinking game out of it, even…down one shot every time Sonny sounds like he’s about to cough up a hairball. You’ll be drunk before the midpoint of the second act.
On the other side of the ledger, the fight scenes are generally entertaining. Sure, they’re not as slick as modern day audiences have come to expect, but they make up for that by being fairly violent. The Street Fighter was one of the first films to get an X rating based solely on its violence. There’s no nudity to be found in the film, but there is plenty of head bashing to keep your interest. Chiba’s a one man wrecking crew, one of the guys that the phrase ‘his hands and feet are registered as deadly weapons’ was created for. Chiba takes on hordes of bad guys here, punching one in the mouth and knocking out all of his teeth, ripping off a man’s penis with his bare hands, cracking a guy’s skull (shown in super cool and super cheesy X-ray style) and popping out a few eyeballs (there’s enough eye violence in this film to make Lucio Fulci squeal with delight). If gore’s your bag, then this film delivers more onscreen carnage than most modern day horror flicks.
The acting and writing are terrible, with Chiba being the best of the bunch—but that’s not really saying much. Terry’s your typical 1970’s anti-hero. As Christian Slater so eloquently put it in True Romance (a film that is largely responsible for the resurgence in popularity of The Street Fighter series), ‘well, he’s not so much a good guy as he’s just a bad motherf*cker’. Much like the ronin of countless Japanese samurai films, Terry is a man who fights for what he believes in and follows a strict moral code—although doing these things doesn’t always place him in the most heroic of lights. Still, these characters are just good enough to make them better than the bad guys—and that’s all an audience really needs in order to root for them.
Waichi Yamada (who plays Ratnose) is the worst actor in the film. He’s your typical sidekick—meaning he’s a real wimp who gets in the way more often than not. He has a tendency to shriek all of his lines, and listening to him beg Terry not to leave him at the second act climax had me questioning if there wasn’t some kind of sexual relationship going on between these two characters.
Director Shigehiro Ozawa does a decent job helming the film. There’s nothing overly glamourous here—the film looks like it was made in the early ‘70s (from the staid and traditionally framed shots all the way through to the wackacha funk on the soundtrack). The film moves along at a decent pace, with a variety of different sets and locations, and you shouldn’t find yourself becoming too bored between the fight sequences. The one thing that does tend to stand out is the abrupt ending. The Street Fighter doesn’t so much conclude as it just stops—Terry takes part in a climactic battle to the death, the fight ends, a title card that pitches the sequel comes up, fade to black…no resolution, no list of credits, no nothing. It’s odd, but not a major problem.
Image Entertainment and New Line Cinema have combined forces to release The Street Fighter (as well as its sequels) on laserdisc—which how I viewed this film. The picture is very good, presented in a letterbox aspect ratio. Sound is decent with the film presented in either the original Japanese with English subtitles (the preferred way to view the film) or in dubbed English (which is the default setting). The film is presented in all of its gory uncut glory, with all the violence and mayhem intact. Avoid viewing the cut to ribbons 73 minute print of this film at all costs.
It’s easy to see why The Street Fighter has garnered such a reputation amongst fans of martial arts films and 70’s exploitation cinema. It’s a no hold barred barrage of violence and melodrama pushed along by Sonny Chiba’s portrayal of a killer with no conscience—who just happens to be the good guy. And while it’s not as slick as more recent martial arts films, nor as over-the-top as the inimitable Story of Riki, it’s still a flick with a mean streak that stretches nearly a mile wide. If you can get past the cheesy acting, the lame plot, and the weird choking noises during the fights, then you’ll be rewarded with a film chock full of blood, guts, and violence. Seriously, this film gets 4 stars from me because it's so cheesy it's actually fun. If you’re at all interested in martial arts cinema, 1970’s anti-heroes, or exploitation cinema, then The Street Fighter is well worth a look.
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