The Street Fighter

It's not about honour. It's not about pride. It's not about schools of thought, or nationality. It's not even about money. What it is about is grinding your opponent under your foot till their hip shatters into bone shrapnel, turning their guts into a pierced, fecal mess. It's about throwing men from balconies and watching their heads shatter into mush on the tarmac below. It's about tearing, clawing, ripping at any dangling weakness. It's about beating everyone into a hateful pulp. It's about victory.

Sonny Chiba fights like a cornered beast. Formal stances are replaced by either ducking opportunism or naked rage. Chiba's fighting style is ugly and mean, lacking any of Chinese Boxing cinema's balletic qualities. Grace is irrelevant - he's out to kill. Structurally, fighting in The Street Fighter is much like Bruce Lee's first few films. Not so much a match-up as an overwhelming pummelling. Chiba is not content to down an opponent either. Snap kicks are out. Howling, gouges, and swipes are in. He intends to cripple.

Chiba plays Takuma Tsurugi - an international bastard for hire saddled with Rakuda Cho, comedy sidekick whom he doesn't even seem to like. Tsurugi pisses off a load of gangsters by asking for far too much money. After annihilating dozens of their henchman, he decides to throw in with their quarry - a pretty young oil magnate played by Yutaka Nakajima - but not before putting several of her bodyguards in comas. Tsurgi is ruthlessly, effortlessly, immoral. Completely willing to sell debt flaunting moochers into sex slavery at the drop of a hat. A man completely and utterly locked into a personal martial arts doomsday by his father's psychotic parting wish: "never trust anyone". He doesn't Tsurgi senior. Never, ever. Mess with Chiba and he'll deform your skull with an X-Ray punch. POW!