Kozure satsujin ken

Out of the 8 or so Sonny Chiba movies I've seen this ranks 2nd only to The Streetfighter. Amazing action, awesome slow motion editing (that speeds up on impact at times), and drama too. Sonny gives one of his best performances.

I wasn't expecting much from KARATE WARRIORS, but I have to say that this film really delivered! Judging by the comments it seems to be mixed up with the STREET FIGHTER franchise, but it's a stand-alone thriller loosely based on the YOJIMBO storyline. Chiba plays a karate-fighter who arrives in a seaside town brutalised by a couple of warring yakuza brothers. Dualism is the focus here, as there are two sisters, one of whom is a virgin and the other a prostitute, while our hero's dark side is tempered by his relationship with an innocent little boy. The story is packed with stylish action sequences which innovate in terms of super slow-motion and shaky camerawork, while the human story is oddly affecting come the end. A strong little fight flick at the end of the day.

Gangs are smashing the pachinko parlor and Sonny Chiba is smoking Tiparellos. He drags an injured man to a talkative doctor who tells us the entire plot of the movie. I am used to that sort of thing watching these movies and tolerate it. One thing I can't tolerate is annoying children in movies. Sonny meets an annoying kid who is fishing.

The story is brother versus brother in the gangster business and Sonny versus samurai in the martial arts business.

The fights are overall above average. My one complaint is the shakey and too close camera technique that was sometimes used. Directors back then really needed a steady hand held camera to get the shots they wanted but it was not invented yet. They still tried to get the shot and the shakes spoiled it.

"Kozure satsujin ken", hereby referred to as "Karate Warriors", opens abruptly with a scene of yakuzas trashing a porno store. As the camera captures the action, zoomed-up and violently shaking, you can't help but ask yourself- "What the hell is going on?". This opening scene neatly summarizes the entire movie's strict three-part formula, which observant viewers can pick up on:

1. Plot scene

2. Female Nudity/Abuse/Sex scene

3. KARATE TIME

All aspiring film-makers take note, because that is the winning combination for a movie. Karate Warriors deals it in spades.

First, vaguely introduce characters by means of a plot scene. Make sure to show the entire character in the frame, so that people can see what he is wearing. Don't worry about introducing women, because as I will show in the next paragraph, they don't matter. If the character is holding something, it's even better. Make these scenes the most tame in the movie. In fact, don't even record audio for them. In Karate Warriors, they turned the microphones off for these parts, because as some old saying goes, Karate Warriors express themselves through their fists. The deaf silence of the lack of audio adds definite dramatic flair. However, don't feel pressured to actually explain any sort of story in these plot scenes. Karate Warriors didn't.

Next, bring in a female character. Karate Warriors had something like 10 female characters, and they all get raped or killed. Sonny Chiba expresses his cunning sexuality by having sex with one of them, immediately after she was abused and beaten by a belt! If they manage to escape the movie's fleeting plot without getting raped or killed, it's because they already showed their skin and made a run for it. In one of the last scenes, one of the women gets impaled by a sword, and the ruthless thugs just stand there with their arms folded, looking tough. In these days of film-making, you aren't going to get any attention from the independent film critics unless you get provocative!

By this time, you can predict that any time there is nudity or female abuse, the next scene will have what can only be called KARATE TIME. KARATE TIME happens when 10 or more thugs storm into a room, and then either Sonny Chiba or the samurai guy appears in the room. Suddenly, the camera zooms in, shakes violently, and people start screaming and moving around chaotically. Quite frankly, you have no idea of what the hell is going on, until you make out either a fist or a sword swinging around and somebody falls over. In some fights, time even slows down and speeds up for dramatic effect, resembling something out of The Matrix, except 30 years earlier. For a movie made in the 70's, this is actually pretty stylish, and very much ahead of it's time. Another plus is that those moments are when you can actually clearly see the action going on. Otherwise, the action scenes can be decently depicted by standing up out of your chair, flailing your fists about wildly as in a sissy fight, and screaming.

And that's about it. The movie follows this pattern to the end. All the scenes are awkwardly edited together, often jumping abruptly from one scene to the next. Who can blame them? It's not easy to smoothly go from plot to woman abuse to all-out chaos. Karate Warriors is highly entertaining. It practically has NO story. The action scenes are strangely cool despite not comprehending more than half of them. And, it's probably the only time you will ever laugh at somebody being abused, thanks to the care-free abusive attitude Japan in the 1970's. This is Karate Warriors: "chop-socky karate action with nary a cop in sight!"

Version: English dub

Like nearly every other martial-arts movie made in the 70s, and presented on a $10 "Master's of Martial Arts" DVD, it is nearly impossible to watch 'Karate Warriors' and actually understand what is happening. For example, in the first scene, you can nearly make out some yakuza trashing a pornography shop. I say nearly, but this movie is presented in the total opposite of widescreen, I like to call it "super-compressed screen". I blame this on both bad cinematography and a cheap DVD authoring job. Neither of which are factors when Sonny Chiba is involved.

Sonny Chiba arrives in a town where two gangs are fighting each other. After someone is hurt in the showdown in the porno-shop, Sonny Chiba takes him to a doctor. This doctor seems to know everything about both gangs, telling Sonny everything he needs to know about the evil-doers before this doctor disappears for the rest of the movie, which ends up Sonny v. every gang member in town v. a wandering samurai (I thought wandering, sword-carrying samurai had kinda disappeared before the 1970s, but I guess I was wrong), as Sonny takes on the two gangs by playing them against each other.

Think that sounds familiar? It should, as 'Karate Warriors' is another remake of Akira Kurosawa's 'Yojimbo'. It isn't as good as 'Yojimbo', or the Sergio Leone remake 'A Fistful of Dollars', but it is entertaining. Any plot is substituted for fights, fights, and more fights. For example, any scene that shows either someone in sunglasses or a group of at least 3 men, you can be assured that someone is going to be beaten up very shortly.

On the negative side, the camera is very shaky, which makes it hard to see if there is a fight on the screen or just a couple of guys playing one of those primary-school clapping games. When we finally get to see a clear fight, it is in slow-motion, then a speed-up when a strike connects, and back to slow-motion. And everyone thought 'the Matrix' was original.

'Karate Warriors' makes a good introductory lesson on Japanese movies from the 70s: Anyone wearing sunglasses and refuses to take them off is generally a bad guy, women are always secondary characters, nothing makes a better plot-device than a good old fashioned random brawl, an any apparent emotional ending is really a phony-ending just to tie up all loose ends before Sonny kills the remaining bad-guys in the real ending - 7/10