The Street Fighter - 1974

I don't know if I ever really saw this movie before. I know Sonny Chiba and I know I've seen some of his movies, I also know of the Street Fighter series and I know of the multiple sequels therein. But I honestly don't remember if I'd ever seen this movie before. I guess I fail.

I put it on last night having recently re-watched both Kill Bill 1 and 2. It's easy to see where that movie got its lineage. Street Fighter is brutal and violent and groundbreaking and overly stylistic and all that would later be known as Quentin Tarantino's trademark Style.

Early on in the film it's apparent that Street Fighter draws a lot from classic japanese Cinema. Toshiro Mifune was basically the same character in most of his movies, and even looks very similar to Sonny Chiba. They both have similar facial expressions and I would have to think that Chiba was deliberately modeling himself after Mifune.

There's all sorts of fun and wild things happening in this movie too. Besides the fact that the plot moves fast, there is multiple story lines going on at the same time, there is brand-new groundbreaking special effects, and there is an antihero dark main character who we want to learn more about.

I've started to watch the sequel right after the first one, but honestly without getting too much into the sequel let me just say that the first film is a necessary, amazing, still relevant and groundbreaking film to this day and I give it five stars.