Search - The Street Fighter on DVD

It's good

General Zombie | the West | 07/27/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"'The Street Fighter' isn't one of the classier or more elegant martial arts films, but it's a lotta fun. The fight choreography obviously isn't as complicated or polished as you'd see in more modern films, or even some of the better films of the time, but it's still pretty cool. That, and Chiba's gots real charisma and presence, and is a very solid (...)hero. That's about all you need as far as character is concerned, in this sorta film. This film was infamously violent at it's release, and while this is gonna fade a lot over 30 years, some of the violence here is pretty amusing and impressive. I can imagine people falling out of there chairs while watching the (...) scene 30 years ago. In fact, I could imagine that happening to me now, if I hadn't known about it before hand. The vomit-punch is pretty nasty, too. That, and it just generally has a level of intensity and brutality lacking from most kung-fu films. (Note the scene where Terry breaks one dude's arm three times, right in a row. Painful stuff) The film does take a while to get going, as there is relatively little fighting in the first half of the film, but whaddya expect. It can't all be fighting. (And, some movies try to have too much fighting, which occasionally becomes more tedious and repetitious than just having everyone sit around.) And if avoids the common pitfall of having the neverending 1 on 1 duel. If two characters fight for more than 4 minutes, it's almost guaranteed to get boring. Fortunately, Terrry usually has to fight groups of opponents, which is the real way to go.

Yeah, I'm done. Very entertaining movie.

Grade: B-"