The Street Fighter (1974) on Netflix
R19741h 31mActionCrimeThriller
Martial artist Takuma Tsurugi frees a condemned murderer for hire. When yakuza and Hong Kong gangsters want him to kidnap oil heiress Sarai, he refuses and offers her his protection.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.9/106,257 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
Takuma Tsurugi is a martial artist who hires out his fists. His current job is to free Tateki Shikenbaru, a murderer waiting to be executed: disguised as a Buddhist monk, Tsurugi punches Shikenbaru into a collapse just before the execution, and he and his sidekick Rakuda take him off the ambulance. The clients, Shikenbaru's brother Gijun and sister Nachi, cannot pay the rest of what they owe, and Tsurugi attacks them. Gangsters of the yakuza and the Hong Kong mafia then try to hire him for a kidnapping. Their target is Sarai, a young oil heiress, and Tsurugi refuses them. Sarai stays at a Seibukan dojo under the care of her uncle, the karate master Kendo Masaoka; Tsurugi challenges the school, then offers to protect her. Masaoka accepts.
Cast
- Tony Ceteraas Abdul Jadot
- Nobuo Kawaias Tetsunosuke Tsuchida
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Street Fighter (1974)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The Street Fighter holds a distinction as the first film to be given an X rating in the US solely because of its violence.
- During the final year of his show Key Hunter, Sonny Chiba met Bruce Lee through mutual friends and the two began discussing making a film together; the talks were put off by Chiba's schedule, and by the time he returned to Hong Kong he learned Lee had died.
- The title of the fighting game series Street Fighter, which began with the 1987 arcade game Street Fighter, was inspired by The Street Fighter.
- The film was especially controversial for a scene in which Tsurugi castrates the rapist Bondo with his bare hands, the scene that reputedly earned it its X rating.
- The Street Fighter introduced x-ray vision fatality finishing moves, at first seen as a gimmick to stand out from other martial arts films, and the technique went on to influence later works including the Mortal Kombat games.
- 16 minutes were cut from The Street Fighter to secure an R rating; that was the version first released on home video by MGM/CBS in 1980, until the film was later re-released complete.
- In 1993, the film and its sequels got mainstream North American exposure in Tony Scott's True Romance, whose leads spend time at a Sonny Chiba Street Fighter marathon; Quentin Tarantino later ranked The Street Fighter 13th on his top 20 grindhouse films list.
