Sonny Chiba's most popular movie was The Street Fighter. You can usually find it in the martial arts section wherever you buy movies, but really they should make a new section called "hardcore beatdown movies" and put thirty copies of The Street Fighter there. If you walk past the hardcore beatdown section and don't buy anything, someone will slap you right in your fucking face.
The Street Fighter was the first movie in the history of the world to get an X rating for violence. Think about that. Someone sat down and watched a Sonny Chiba movie and decided an hour and a half of Sonny Chiba kicking the shit out of people was just as intense as watching a chick take two dicks in the ass for an hour and a half. Maybe that's not a great comparison, but maybe I'm not a very good writer.
What's awesome about the movie is that if it were any other film, Sonny Chiba would have been the bad guy. He fights dirty, he forces himself on women, he assaults women, he sells women into prostitution... really, he does a lot of mean things to women. He also whips a lot of ass and probably kills like a hundred dudes over the course of the movie. He gouges guys in the eyeballs and chops them in the dick. He doesn't really have to fight dirty, since he's obviously the most badass dude in the movie, but he does it anyways because he's just a mean motherfucker.
The Street Fighter opens with Sonny Chiba breaking this guy Junjo out of prison. Disguised as priest. And just so Junjo knows rule number one (do not fuck with Sonny Chiba), the break-out plan involves Sonny Chiba punching the guy in the goddamn spine and putting him in a coma. Never ask Sonny Chiba to do anything for you, because he will find a way to punch something in the spine.
YOU: "Hey, Sonny Chiba, I'm going to Florida for a week! Can you watch my pet kitten please? I don't want to worry about him."
SONNY CHIBA: (picks up kitten and punches it in the spine) "NOW YOU DO NOT HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT YOUR KITTEN. THAT WILL BE TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS."
Junjo was minutes away from being executed, but of course now they can't execute the dude because he's comatose, right? Just say right, and we'll move on. The cops try to transport him to the hospital, but along the way they're cut off by Sonny Chiba and his comical sidekick Rat Nose (more on that later), who kidnap Junjo and send him off to China to live the free life (the coma was temporary, because Sonny Chiba can do shit like put a dude in a temporary coma and nobody asks any questions).
Sonny Chiba was paid for the break-out by Junjo's brother and sister. Turns out they can't pay Chiba's fee for the little dirty deed and want to back out of the deal. In most courts that's considered attempting to fuck with Sonny Chiba, and that shit does not fly. You can watch the scene here, courtesy of YouTube.
The brother ends up getting kicked around and thrown headfirst out a window. He lands skull-first on the pavement below and his head splits open like an egg, spilling bright red 70's Technicolor blood all over the place. Then Sonny Chiba slaps the sister around a little bit and decides he can sell her to the Yakuza as a whore and get the money she owes him that way.
And he does.
You have to hand it to any movie where the main character, your hero, settles bets by pimping women against their will to organized crime syndicates and somehow still keeps that character likable. There's even a scene that shows a bunch of thugs drugging and raping the girl. I guess she just learned a lesson the hard way - you don't fuck with Sonny Chiba.
As badass as Sonny Chiba is, for some reason The Street Fighter gives him a comic relief sidekick. He's about as useful as most other sidekicks, meaning he's only really around to get captured and beat on. Even Sonny Chiba slaps the poor guy around a little bit, but then again, if you were Sonny Chiba, wouldn't you? And just because Sonny Chiba beats on his sidekick a little doesn't mean he doesn't like him, because I seriously don't think there's a character in this movie Sonny Chiba doesn't punch in the face at one point.
Rat Nose's primary duty is apparently cooking Sonny Chiba dinner. My guess is Rat Nose's ability to cook a mean fried chicken is the only thing that keeps him alive. Thankfully later on in the movie Rat Nose dies trying to run over a blind samurai with a motorcycle.
Yes I just said that.
There's this whole band of assassins that have colorful gimmicks. One of them is a blind samurai kinda dude who looks all creepy. He carries around a walking stick that has a sword inside it. That's pretty cool. Of course Sonny Chiba breaks off a piece of his sword and feeds it through the guy's back for killing Rat Nose, but he's cool while he lasts.
There's also this big bald dude that shows up in a hallway for some reason. He's like an old 8-bit Nintendo boss or something, because Sonny Chiba's just walking down this hall and all of a sudden this big fat guy who's like seven feet tall shows up. He literally jumps from behind a corner or something. I honestly expected him to start throwing barrels. Instead he just starts throwing Sonny Chiba around, which is really stupid because you don't fuck with Sonny Chiba.
Since he's the gigantic bald guy, kicking him in the stomach doesn't work, because you can never hurt the big bald guy by hitting him in the stomach, so Sonny Chiba does this totally awesome sliding jumpkick thing right to the guy's ankle and topples him over like fucking King Hippo, and then just because he's pissed off, Chiba gouges the bald guy's eyes. And this isn't any kind of Three Stooges eyepoke thing either, he just stabs his fingers into the dude's fucking sockets and there's blood everywhere and shit. Fucking fat guy, that's what you get.
The best kill in the movie though, by far, is when Sonny Chiba kills the Black Guy. I capitalize Black Guy only because he's the only person of African American descent in the whole movie, and I kinda feel bad for him, especially because not only is he the only black person in the movie, he's also a rapist. Blame Japanese people for racial stereotyping, or blame black people for being rapists. Either way, every scene the Black Guy is in it's like his rape-o-meter goes to ten and he becomes an unstoppable raping machine. Until he tries to mess with Sonny Chiba's girl, of course.
So Black Guy is all in rape mode and he's throwing this chick around, yelling rapist stuff like "Come on!" and "Yeah!" and he totally doesn't even see Sonny Chiba climb in the window behind him. Now, Sonny Chiba has just scaled a fucking rope like five stories to rescue this chick, and he finds some black dude trying to get his rape on with his girl. Needless to say, things do not go well for Black Guy.
It's quick, but it's painful - Sonny Chiba knocks Black Guy loopy with a couple punches and kicks, and then to teach the guy a lesson (which is don't fuck with Sonny Chiba), he grabs Black Guy's crotch and pulls his fucking balls off.
I'm fucking serious, he literally tears this guy's testicles off with his bare hands, and then he holds them up triumphantly, like they're a trophy or he just got the flag in Double Dare or something. I swear to God, nothing in a kung fu movie is more painful to watch if you're a guy, except maybe when the dude gets jabbed in the nuts with a spear in Chinese Super Ninja.
There's only one time in the whole movie that Sonny Chiba is actually in a little bit of trouble, and that's when he's fighting some short chubby guy at a karate school. Somehow this chubby guy is some kind of invincible karate master, even though he looks like the kind of guy that gets off smelling soiled panties. I guess he can be both. Anyways, he kind of knocks around Sonny Chiba a little bit, and just when you think maybe Sonny Chiba is beaten, the most incredible thing happens - THE WORLD'S GREATEST FLASHBACK.
It literally comes out of nowhere. It's black and white footage of a young Sonny Chiba watching his father get executed for some crime or something. A soldier tells him "Your father is a traitor, and your mother is a whore!" and it all takes place with lots of rain and mud. It kind of reminds me of Schindler's List, if Schindler's List had Japanese people and horrible dubbing. Either way, this flashback occurs and Sonny Chiba hears his father's voice telling him to be strong and shit. It ends with the greatest motivational quote I've ever heard - "YOU MUST BE... A NUMBA ONE MAN!"
And just like that, the wakka-wakka guitar theme music starts playing and Sonny Chiba starts running around, literally bouncing off the walls. He flies off the wall and jumpkicks the chubby karate guy right in his big belly, and the dude is such a pussy he gives up right there. He says something crazy like "Okay, I see your point," even though nobody was really saying anything, but I think Sonny Chiba's point was I will jumpkick you to death and the chubby guy didn't want any of that. They basically decide to be friends after that, but probably only because the chubby guy doesn't want to die.
The movie's big climax comes when it turns out the Yakuza is working for the Mafia or something crazy, and they kidnap this oil heiress chick Sonny Chiba's kind of sweet on. He never really shows her any affection, and in fact the first time they meet he punches through a door and forces himself on her, and then throws her head-first into a wall when chubby karate guy demands he release her, but she's in love with him anyways.
So the Yakuza/Mafia guys (Mafiuza?) take her to this big boat full of henchmen who know karate and figure they'll be safe. But Sonny Chiba has a tiny motorboat and a big heart, and catches up to them, climbs on to the boat, and literally spends ten minutes of the movie killing every person he sees. He's cracking skulls, breaking arms, tossing guys over guardrails to their death... don't take my word for it, watch it for yourself.
It all comes down to a battle between Sonny Chiba and Junjo, the prisoner from the beginning of the movie. I guess he doesn't appreciate his sister being forced to perform sexual services (go figure!) and has joined the Mafiuza to get revenge. There's a big showdown with rain and lightning and the whole thing is very dramatic and then Sonny Chiba rips out Junjo's throat. The End.
The movie ends that abruptly. And so does this post.
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