| Karate Warriors (1977) Cast:Sonny Chiba,Akane Kawasaki Sonny Chiba stars as a thug (not far removed from The Street Fighter) who plays Yojimbo with the two feuding yakuza brothers in town, however along the way he meets an honorable swordsman and befriends his son (Not unlike Baby Cart series) and then find themselves against each other in the climax in this slightly better than usual but far too routine martial arts actioner. Sonny Chiba's screen presence and martial arts ability is always a factor that makes his movies almost always watchable but in this case I found the movie only okay. There were some great ideas here mainly the swordsman and his son and Chiba in his Street Fighter mode promises some interesting moments but the failure here is that the chemistry between Chiba and the Swordsman is one-note and the movie never bothers to look at exploring these characters and basically the movie consists mainly of Chiba fighting it out with anonymous thugs. This was of course was handled much better in The Street Fighter and therefore I can't quite recommend seeing it. Though I will say that fans of Kung Fu movies and Sonny Chiba will love this movie. I just wanted to see Chiba do more than just fight random thugs. D.Kazuhiko Yamaguchi**1/2 |