Takuma Tsurugi (Sonny Chiba Shin’ichi) was always up to the challenge and when he was required to free Go Owada (Shioji Akira) from police capture, while the police had the whole building surrounded, he knew he could do it. And for ten million yen, he is willing to do what it takes, at this point in his career it has become a possible and reality. He is famous for saying, “I make the impossible possible.” Sadly, the mob that wanted to hire him had less than good intentions. After sending him thugs that expertly practiced kung fu, in particular Thai styles, and a strange man dressed in a mariachi band with a gun, he was instead given an attache filled with newspapers. After this being the third time Takuma has endured something like this, it sadly has ‘triggered’ consideration of enabling better reputation clients or simply switching careers entirely. Regardless, he is still up against a strange martial arts master dressed in a mobster outfit known as Takera Kunigami (Wada Koji) in the hopes of selling a blank tape that could provide numerous Tokyo politicians and their ‘prices’ for great scandal and blackmail.
In Ozawa Shigehiro’s final installment of the cycle of films The Street Fighter, titled The Street Fighter’s Last Revenge, Takuma fights and sneaks, but most importantly, he fights some more. This movie was released in 1974.
Sonny Chiba first played this character in a violent crime picture where the protagonist, who was a classic badass, tortured people for money. The main character was very amoral and would even go as far as selling his clients into slavery if they failed to pay. His only friend in the world was a character named Rakuda, or Ratface, in the English dub. By the second movie, however, Takuma had shifted from being a complete amoral badass to a person resembling a hero just a little more. It was not perfect, however. For starters, he was still in the business of beating people for money and enjoyed a life off the grid. He did, however, make decisions that were different to what his character in the previous film would have made. The amount of abuse he endured at the hands of the sweet heiress from the first film was enough to make one question if it was character development or just a shift in interests. After all, it doesn’t matter; what remains true is that it was pretty fun watching mostly an anti-hero decimate everyone in his path while working through a criminal organization or two. The third movie, however, shows a more superhero Takuma.
He has assembled a closet full of disguises and masks that he wears like Batman or Sherlock Holmes in order to do his work. He now has a broader set of ethical principles that force him to negotiate with an anonymous murderer who has captured one of his answering service girls. To put it mildly, I wouldn’t say he is a tamer rendition of the character, but he does present a more pleasant persona. Sonny Chiba a rising star of action films has been placed in a new role that happens to share the name with a character from older movies (and also in a mandatory black-and-white childhood flashback to when he watched his father get shot for treason).
James Bond’s persona might be the quintessential action hero this time around. Some of the spying gadgets Bond uses always seem to have a stamp of approval from Spencer. Additionally, there’s a huge selection of women surrounding him who he can either charm or is forced to be wined over. Takuma is a puppet master who is dominated by his oversexed ‘Bond’ femme fatale wife Aya Owada (Ike Reiko). She manipulates him through sex and head of the crime family to achieve her nefarious goals. Huo-Feng’s character is actually far more interesting. In my opinion, she embodies what a good Bond girl should be Sexier but not sexualized! Unfortunately, she’s more than half-written out of the story after the ‘bad’ transformation. The more notorious problem that arises, though, is the gals who form part of his answering service. At least one of them wishes to drop her inhibitions and make an attempt to claim him comically. Yet, the actress manages to impress us with her indisputable charm, even if we also acknowledge the fact that she is unworthy of all the emotional baggage that comes with the handsome actor.
As Masaoka seems a little too casual, it is a pity that he does not hang around to assist, or at the very least, give a proper groin kick. Ah well, you can’t have it all I suppose. On this particular occasion, there is only one somewhat familiar face, and it’s just for a quick display of Okinawa martial arts. It would have been good to see him, and entertaining to witness how he plans on demonstrating the martial arts that Takuma is supposed to somehow overcome.
I think it’s time to explain the cut of the film I’m watching. Some of the followers of the series will be puzzled and think of me as a drug addict because this plot doesn’t add up. This is primarily because I have been discussing the Japanese cut of the feature at great length and not the Americans. A lot of the resources did get relocated, altered, and tampered with. There were shifts in character casting, and an exchange of Maguffins took place. In the Japanese version, one tape with materials for blackmailing shifted inexplicably into two tapes that held the secret to manufacturing inexpensive heroin in the American version. The second version indeed sounds maddening for anyone to comprehend, while the first tape is delightfully engaging and the story is laced with thrilling tracks. While the intrigue is here, one should bear in mind that the Japanese edition does come with a set of subtitles.
Sonny Chiba’s character has not lost any of his swagger to this day. He is, without a doubt, enjoying playing the role of a macho dude. Even though these characters and their mannerisms are portrayed in a way that is bound to inspire manga and anime for decades, he fights and walks like a living embodiment of badassness. All this without the use of irony and unfortunately way less goofy grimaces. Although his face is devoid of such expressions, he is an action man, and comes naturally for him. While the role does not provide him the nuance of functioning beyond cool cracking evil chuckles or enduring the effects of the latest unjust brutal attack, he does have the opportunity to do more than what we have previously seen him do in this role. For instance, he has a couple of sex scenes. Even more, he can afford to take a break in between to understand the condition of his victim while swearing under his breath his inability to follow the bad guy who caused her injury. As stated above, not a lot of diversity is needed to perform the role, nevertheless, Chiba’s appeal deserves further exploration in character of his. Somehow, he has one of those faces and movements that it is almost impossible to ignore. He has those eyebrows, which are a solid indication of his animal magnetism.
The editing keeps the viewers interested and gives off a modern sense of pacing and feel. The camera remains fixed in certain aspects of the editing, however, the cinematography makes it colorful and active which makes the camera engage in some movements. It is possible that we do not appreciate the extended martial arts sequences because of the incredibly beautiful dance break. The hero is blasted with fists until his opponent passes out on top of him and blood begins to pour out of his mouth. The more extreme editing works add a comedic touch, which is why Takuma, an eccentric character, turns his opponent into a rag doll and slams him into the air until he branches out his legs to kick him again, sending him higher than before. He gives off the unreal perception of being a yo-yo more than a rag doll. To be sincere, it reminded me of the time I saw a cat play in our garden with a dead lizard. This is not to say that the picture is ridden with wall-to-wall violence or horror movie levels of blood and dismemberment.
The pace of the action is more contained and not as gory as in previous installments. The same can be said for the somewhat flamboyant, kooky and certainly brutal martial arts showdowns at the tail end of the picture. There is a lot of blood present. It is lively, gleeful, and utterly unrealistic. The narration also features some quite amusing sound effects when the bones snap, as Takuma inhales and during the extravagant, energetic “Big Tsunami” buildup by his martial arts teacher. These events might have been eye-popping some time back, but from the view of horror exhibitions which started in the eighties and continues to this day, all of this now appears to be a bit charming.
In spite of this, a film like this thrives or fails on its unique action set pieces. The Last Revenge of the Street Fighters has some notable fistfights. Takuma, as was evident in past movies, employs these tactics in a very refreshing manner. More often than not, if he needs to get to a place where he is not supposed to be, he usually picks a fight and allows that to take him where he wants to go. On this occasion, he is a touch more cunning. Kun fights do come into play, but they tend to have a disguise coming first, a pretense of stealth I use the word ‘pretense’ intentionally. What else do you expect? He is Street Fighter, not Street Sneaky Ninja.
The last part of it does return to the feel of the first one in quite a few ways. One fight in the rain parallels the climax of the first movie. The bad girls get punished, the bad men get punished as well, and no one gets the happy ending with the money that they wished for. Happy endings in a movie like this usually mean living through to the next one. The finale anchors the series’s tone quite effectively, a chance the reader sought to an abominable ending. In contrast, the finale is an appropriately grim and scaled-back end, much more fitting of the tone of crime drama and fiction. And while this particular film does not put its hero out to pasture I personally dread, like Donald Goines deciding to kill off Kenyatta in the final book in his series, it does seem that Takuma has one further chance to change his trade.
Honestly, this is probably the weakest of the three Street Fighters. On this point, I am not alone among the fans. Still, it is leaps and bounds better than a number of these martial arts films I have watched before. Some of those I have found simply too silly, bizarre, and ridiculous to sustain my attention for too long. In the Street Fighter’s Last Revenge, I cannot say my interest ever waned. Had I seen this one first, perhaps I would have enjoyed it more it has that perfect combination of madness and laugh-out-loud moments, which is right up my alley but relative to the astonishing first two that came out before it. It’s a fantastic film; just not as fantastic as those.
We are now moving on to the very last entry of this series featuring Sonny Chiba Street Fighter. We now check Sister Street Fighter, which is a continuation of the first film in the series. As in the previous film, Shihomi Etsuko and Chiba reunite to tell the story of a woman who is determined to rescue her brother from evil at the expense of a few neck snaps and punches. The film is available for purchase on DVD, streaming, or gift packs for the Sister Street Fighter series and on BluRay from Arrow. These days, it’s absolutely fantastic how just about everything is so easily accessible.
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