The Street Fighter

The Street Fighter centres on Takuma Tsurugi, a martial-arts mercenary played by Sonny Chiba. A Yakuza group hires him to abduct a young woman who has inherited her late father's fortune. When the gang refuses to pay him what was agreed, Tsurugi turns against his employers and takes the heiress's side, which puts him in conflict with the Yakuza and draws in the authorities, other criminals and an international kidnapping operation.

Shigehiro Ozawa directed the film, released by Toei Company in February 1974 and running 90 minutes. It is the ninth feature in the directing career listed for Ozawa, arriving between Lullaby for a Tough Guy (1972) and Return of the Street Fighter (1974), the sequel released the same year. The screenplay was written by Kōji Takada and Motohiro Torii, with Norimichi Matsudaira producing. Chiba leads a credited cast of 45 that also includes Etsuko Shihomi, Goichi Yamada, Masashi Ishibashi, Yutaka Nakajima and Masafumi Suzuki.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 6.9 from around 6,100 votes, and on TMDB it stands at 6.8 from roughly 119 votes. The two scores sit close together, indicating that the audiences who have logged it, whether in large numbers on one service or small numbers on the other, regard it similarly.