The Street Fighter is honestly not an easy film to review because it's so good yet so bad at the same time. It's the first movie to ever be rated X in the United States based solely on its violent content. The overall plot is terrible but as with most martial arts films, plot is simply filler between each fight scene. The effects are cheap, the dubbing is bad and any copy you can find on DVD is likely to be low quality. But hey! This is Grindhouse Exploitation from 1974, one can only expect so much. The lead actor Sonny Chiba is often overlooked when it comes to martial arts films. Chiba holds black belts in Ninjutsu, Kendo, Judo and 3 different styles of Karate and more recently he played Hittori Hanzo in Kill Bill. His onscreen fighting style is ruthless in The Street Fighter and his character Terry is neither a good guy nor a bad guy but just a mean SOB. Rather than punching or kicking people to knock them out, he takes things a step further by gouging out eyes, punching out teeth or even ripping off body parts. After watching this film, one can't help but think that Sonny Chiba would have given Bruce Lee a run for his money. While Bruce Lee's style was definitely more polished, I think Chiba's style was dirty and vicious enough to make it a great match. It's too bad that Bruce Lee died a year before this movie was released because an onscreen match up would have been amazing. If you like Bruce Lee films and you haven't seen Sonny Chiba in action I recommend watching The Street Fighter for a more violent, brutal, and anti-hero perspective of the martial arts genre.
Review of The Street Fighter
