The Street Fighter

Takuma Tsurugi is a fighter for hire. He works for nobody; he does the job of whoever pays. He breaks a prisoner out of jail, then sells the man on when he is not paid. This puts him at odds with both the yakuza and the mafia. Then new work comes: a wealthy oil heiress is to be kidnapped and Tsurugi refuses the job. This time he is the target. The narrative proceeds through a series of fights and Tsurugi has no side; he behaves like a hero in no scene. Shigehiro Ozawa directs. Sonny Chiba plays Tsurugi; Etsuko Shihomi is in the cast. It is a Japanese production. It received an X rating in the United States on grounds of violence and was released that way. The fights are built on karate and differ from the Hong Kong films of the period; the blows are heavy and their results shown. The character Chiba plays is an antihero; the narrative makes no attempt to endear him. There is a scene showing a bone breaking through an X ray image, counted as one of the genre's iconic moments. The film was openly cited in American cinema years later and returned to distribution. Its limit is the script; the plot is weak and the characters shallow. Who it is for: viewers who like Japanese fight films of the seventies and Sonny Chiba. Who it is not for: the violence is extreme, some scenes unacceptable by present measure, and the story secondary.