Sonny Chiba returns as bad-ass mercenary Takuma 'Terry' Tsurugi, cracking skulls, breaking bones and causing untold internal injuries as he takes on the mafia, who want him dead for refusing to kill an old karate colleague. With virtually the whole movie consisting of one brutal fight scene after another, martial arts fans should be more than satisfied with this sequel, despite the plot being a virtual rehash of the first film.
As expected, there's lots of impressive kicking and punching from karate champ Chiba, as well as some extremely over the top action that sees our anti-hero performing superhuman feats, including leaping off a motorbike to somersault over a gate, and kicking a hole through a brick wall to leap to safety. Terry Tsurugi's impressive fighting skills also result in plenty of graphic violence, with blood spurting and gushing from his enemies' wounds, and, in the film's most outrageous moment, a punch to the back of a man's head causes both eyeballs to pop out of their sockets.
Other guaranteed crowd-pleasing moments include Terry slipping under the sheets with a naked woman who turns out to be yet another assassin, the return of bad guy Tateki Shikenbaru (Masashi Ishibashi) from The Streetfighter (now equipped with an electronic voice-box, his vocal chords having been ripped out by Terry in the first film), Terry pouring a bottle of whisky over his head (I found that hilarious), and an action packed finale that sees Chiba taking on numerous henchmen, blinding a Mafia baddie with a throwing knife and stabbing some poor bloke in the stomach with the barrel of a gun!
7.5/10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb (although Yôko Ichiji as Terry's irritating sidekick Pin Boke tempted me to round the score down).
As expected, there's lots of impressive kicking and punching from karate champ Chiba, as well as some extremely over the top action that sees our anti-hero performing superhuman feats, including leaping off a motorbike to somersault over a gate, and kicking a hole through a brick wall to leap to safety. Terry Tsurugi's impressive fighting skills also result in plenty of graphic violence, with blood spurting and gushing from his enemies' wounds, and, in the film's most outrageous moment, a punch to the back of a man's head causes both eyeballs to pop out of their sockets.
Other guaranteed crowd-pleasing moments include Terry slipping under the sheets with a naked woman who turns out to be yet another assassin, the return of bad guy Tateki Shikenbaru (Masashi Ishibashi) from The Streetfighter (now equipped with an electronic voice-box, his vocal chords having been ripped out by Terry in the first film), Terry pouring a bottle of whisky over his head (I found that hilarious), and an action packed finale that sees Chiba taking on numerous henchmen, blinding a Mafia baddie with a throwing knife and stabbing some poor bloke in the stomach with the barrel of a gun!
7.5/10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb (although Yôko Ichiji as Terry's irritating sidekick Pin Boke tempted me to round the score down).