Gyakushû! Satsujin ken

I mention in my review for "Return of the Streetfighter" that the first rule of movie making is if something works you beat it to death. The first streetfighter movie worked so they produced a second to beat the concept to death. So what about going for a third beating? Most reviewers feel this movie is a disappointment and the worst of the three movies. What went wrong?

The movie starts with a good action sequence. Sonny gets a job to extract a man from a police shoot out. He then brings him and a mahjong case to get his payment but he is double-crossed. He next fights Etsuko Shihomi. Despite a strong start, after that the problems appear. The character with the sombrero is just dumb. There should have been more fights than the previous movie but instead there were fewer. There was no memorable fight sequence. Instead, the fights all looked alike. Basically, the entire movie seemed like minimal effort in every aspect.

At the same time there was a spin off series, the sister street fighter movies. That's another review!

Japan had its Bruce Lee craze just like everywhere else in the early seventies and Sonny Chiba was their answer to Bruce Lee. Along with the vicious action scenes there were some typically Japanese acts of misogyny which seem pretty bizarre to Western audiences when it's the "hero" doing it (When was the last time you saw Chuck Norris or Jackie Chan sell a woman off to a slave ring because she couldn't afford to pay for getting her brother out of jail?). STREET FIGHTER'S LAST REVENGE is somewhat tamer than the first entries into the series. This time around Chiba is more of a James Bond kinda character, donning rubber masks and vampire fangs(!) and is mixed up in a plot involving cassettes with top secret information. There's also some Gong Show-type freak (Who you see a lot of on Japanese TV) who can break chains (He actually uses a laser) who's heard to kill Chiba (Yeah, right!). Along with the awful dubbing there's also the same black and white footage where Chiba, as a kid, sees his father executed to the Chinese which turns up in all the STREET FIGHTER movies.

In Tony Scott's True Romance, from a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino, Christian Slater's Clare Worley takes his date to the movies to see Sonny Chiba's Streetfighter trilogy. When he is questioned about Chiba's questionable 'heroics', Worley responds that, "he ain't so much a good guy as he is just a bad motherf****r." A long-time fan, Tarantino hits the nail on the head here (he would go on to cast his idol in the Kill Bill films). While Bruce Lee was wowing the world with the speed and agility of the martial arts, Sonny Chiba was demonstrating its brutal, more unforgiving side. In The Streetfighter's Last Revenge, Chiba's anti- hero Takuma Tsurugi is at his most sadistic. He may have punched a guy's eyeballs out of his head in the previous instalment, but here he calmly burns a thug alive in an incinerator.

Much of the appeal of Chiba's movies lies with his sneering approach to the ancient arts, where he is far more comfortable sadistically beating a bad guy to a bloody pulp than he is with finding inner peace. This trilogy-closer has upped his mean streak, and made things a hell of a long weirder. The Streetfighter was excellent, Return of the Streetfighter was passable, and The Streetfighter's Last Revenge comes across as a bunch of scenes discarded from the previous movies for being too bonkers. Not only is Tsurugi a near- unstoppable punch, kick and throw machine, but he now dons Mission: Impossible-esque face masks to disguise his identity, and at one point bears vampire fangs for unexplained reasons. There's also a villain even James Bond would chuckle at: A mafia hit-man who dresses like a mariachi with a giant sombrero and shoots invisible laser beams out of his hands.

The plot itself is incredibly simple. Tsurugi is hired to rescue Go Owada (Akira Shioji) from a police riot in exchange for a hefty payment. When he goes to collect his loot, he is handed a bag of cut-up newspaper and is attacked by the Owada family's men. Furious, he decides to take revenge on the gangsters. There's also a stolen tape and a master foe in Kunagami (Koji Wada). Noticeably less violent than the previous entries, this third feature shares more in common with a spy film than the martial arts genre. As a result, it's less fun, and only manages to pique the interest when at its most idiosyncratic and just plain daft. It's also nice to see exploitation icon Reiko Ike in a supporting role as Chiba's wannabe sidekick. But ultimately, Last Revenge stutters through a threadbare story, failing to deliver the sort of gory chopsocky that made the original so wonderful. Clearly the weakest of the trilogy.

This is not a real street fighter movie. There's no way that this is the same character as the first two movies... why does he have some kind of secret hideout, with disguises and spy-gadgets??? Tsurugi (note: NOT SUGURY) is a violent man, who only does good, because in the end it is what is in his best interest. He's not a super-hero spy or any of the campy crap that can be found in this movie, the third installment. He doesn't call himself "THE STREETFIGHTER" in the first two movies, so why all of a sudden does he say: "They call me THE STREETFIGHTER". The only reason to watch this movie is Chiba and Sue Shiomi. But don't go into it expecting Chiba to have his usual Terry Tsurugi KILLPOWER, because he barely has any in this movie... plus the story is weak in comparison to the first two. The dude who can cut stuff with his laser hands??? All I have to say to him is: "NICE HAT!". Not a cool villain at all. It's not a Street Fighter movie without Junjou.

If you love THE STREET FIGHTER (and you probably do if you looked up this entry) don't even bother with this final entry in the series. This one sucks out loud, and has only one decent fight scene which lasts for about a minute. Our hero now has taken on a more "MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE"-type persona since he now is a master of disguise (???). Skip this.