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!

Takuma Tsurugi (Sonny Chiba) (AKA: The Street Fighter"), rather like James Bond, is an assassin for hire, a man who is a master of disguise and the martial arts but don't cross or betray him because if you do, you will pay and pay dearly. He, again rather like James Bond, has a weakness for playing with dangerous women, particularly the most ruthless and cutthroat. Here the villains, who have hired Tsurugi to get two tape cassette recordings that when played in unison provide a formula for creating synthetic heroin potentially worth a fortune in the wrong hands, make that most fatal mistake of crossing Tsurugi. And now they will pay!

This moves at a brisk pace, is exciting and action-packed, and feels like a much darker take on a James Bond type of film. It's not really all that much like the previous "Street Fighter" fare at all but it is fun if you're willing to forgive that fact. The only problem I had with the film was all the betrayals and double-dealings became confusing after a time and I was surprised Tsurugi allowed himself to be put into a position where he could be betrayed by the lead villains on more than one occasion. Also Tsurugi is hardly an heroic male lead, in fact he's every bit as ruthless and unrelenting, if not even more so, that this story's villains. Still the good in terms of entertainment value here I feel far outweighs the bad.

I don't know whether the terrible dubbing on my DVD is to blame, but the plot to this third and final film in The Streetfighter series made very little sense to me—some nonsense to do with a pair of cassette tapes containing the formula for synthetic heroin. Sonny Chiba's hard-as-nails mercenary Terry Tsurugi is double-crossed by the Yakuza over the sale of one of these tapes and consequently takes revenge, taking time out from the kicking and punching to get jiggy with sexy siren Aya Ôwada (Reiko Ike, who goes topless). Oh, and there's a mariachi in a big black sombrero who fires lasers from his fingers, and Terry dresses up like Dracula.

Clearly, it's all a far cry from the gritty brutality of the original film, with Terry more secret agent than anti-hero, complete with headquarters featuring sliding silver doors. Terry even dons latex masks, Mission Impossible style, to change his identity. Even though I usually welcome a healthy dollop of wackiness in my martial arts films, It simply doesn't suit this series, being too far removed from the previous films, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed. I wanted more of the same, but what I got was a whole load of silliness. Very disappointing.

3.5 out of 10, generously rounded up to 4 for Reiko Ike.

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.

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.