I have not done a Sonny Chiba movie in ages and the fact that my Sonny Chiba collection Vol. 1 is sitting within eye shot of my desk, scowling at me for not watching some of his amazing movies. It was an easy choice today in selecting a Chiba flick to talk about or barely talk about since today’s is a sequel to The Street Fighter which is not the Van Damme video game movie, but a pure kick ass martial arts movie.
This time, Tsugury is hired by Japanese mobster Otaguru (Tanaka) to kill a pair of captured employees so they cannot inform on his activities (he has teamed with the American mafia under the guise of building a martial arts center). When Otaguru orders Tsugury to kill his old friend Masoaka (Suzuki), Tsugury refuses and is forced to go on the run with. To make matters worse, Junjo (Ishibashi), Tsugury’s old nemesis, has reappeared and set his sights on revenge. Tsugury takes a vicious beating from Junjo, but recovers in time to punch, kick, and gouge his way through everyone who has crossed him during the finale. ~ Donald Guarisco, Rovi
This second go around in the Street Fighter series manages to work with a more straightforward plot line instead of the character heavy, slightly muddled plot line of the first movie. This leaner and meaner version lays out the plot in the beginning and then it is pure, hyper-violent ass kicking from then on out. That’s all the Street Fighter series is, just a means to watch Sonny Chiba just fuck shit up in the form of total brutality. It’s an action fans dream come true if they want pure martial arts carnage.
Return of the Street Fighter is just pure action, sometimes overly violent as you watch Chiba just rip apart opponents as if there is no equal. Bone breaking action, brutal fight scenes and overt violence is the hallmark of the film which is utterly satisfying to watch. Watching Sonny Chiba be a badass again in this movie is just a thing of beauty to behold as the intensity he shows while basically pulverizing a mans genitals into dust is just giddy inducing. The scowl that man has when going into ass beating mode is frightening, like a war vet having a flashback to a time where he just laid to waste like a platoon of enemy soldier, you are just watching Chiba go into a fight trance. Terrifying.
The movie is just pure action and nothing else. I kind of forgot what the plot was until reading the synopsis. So if you are a big martial arts fan, you got to check this out and the first one as well. It is well worth the time to witness martial arts carnage at its finest.
