Champion of Death

In the 2nd of his Historical Martial Arts films, Chiba portrays his real life sensei Mas Oyama. The film even recreates Oyama's incredible feat of killing a raging bull with his bare hands (Oyama did this feat over 50 times in real life). Dynamic fight choreography featuring authentic Kyokushinkai techniques. Ironically this is one of the rare Sonny Chiba films in which he DOESN'T tear out or rip off body parts of opponents. A must see for Sonny Chiba fans definitely one of his top 5 films

Mas Oyama was the most successful karate master of the late 20th century. He rejected the "training" of the karate clubs of the time focusing on an intense no holds form of training. He eventually built his system into a huge business empire with hundreds of schools across the world, without compromising his teachings. The testing in the Kyokushin schools are still some of the most physically challenging tests any martial art school requires. One non- physical hardship Oyama faced was prejudice due to his Korean ancestry and he spent time proving that loyalties were to Japan and Japanese Karate. This movie series was part of that effort although anyone who had the chance to meet Oyama (I did) would never question his allegiance to Japan. In this series, Oyama's most famous student, Sonny Chiba, is called upon to portray his master.

Oyama arrives from the countryside where he has been training alone. He challenges and makes short work of the established Karate schools he encounters. Disgusted by the state of karate, Oyama returns to his lone training. He eventually picks up a student, falls in love and gets in the way of gangsters who are allied with the established karate schools. In the middle of this is the legendary bullfight with a mad bull. How much of the film is true is questionable.

That Oyama could kill a bull with his bare hands is true. He was called on to repeat this feat numerous times. There are filmed instances of Oyama actually doing this, although sometimes the bulls seemed to be tethered as Oyama was getting on in years. Sonny Chiba portrays his master with conviction and the karate is quite good. Chiba may not have been the best karate practitioner but, at this point in time, he was certainly above average.

As a whole the movie is good, much better then most martial art films in the drama department. I always wondered why it's not more well known. Possibly it the very realistic depictions of martial arts. People are shown getting tired and hurt unlike 99% of action film where the hero is a limitless fountain of energy and each blow instantly dispatches an opponent to death. Chiba seems so exhausted at one point that it hurts to watch. Perhaps viewers rather not have their entertainment reflect reality so closely.

Recommended especially for martial artists.

Sonny Chiba, as everyone knows, is the man. In this film, he portrays Mas Oyama (1923-1994), a real martial artist who fought over 50 bulls with his bare hands…and won (interesting guy…look him up). Anyway, Chiba only kills one bull in the film but it's a memorable scene and as the liner notes say, right up there with the zombie vs. shark scene in Zombi! The film also offers up loads of hand-to-hand combat and a decent plot to boot, though I don't believe all of it is true. This film is the first of the Oyama trilogy Chiba made and is recommended for fans of martial arts action. Finally, three neat little tidbits; part of the opening theme was used in Kill Bill Volume 1, Oyama himself appears in the opening sequences, and that is because he trained Chiba in real life for five years!

I think what we have with Karate Bullfighter is an Ip Man situation: taking the life of a renowned martial artist and making it more cinematic and action-packed. I'd stand corrected if they were fairly faithful looks at the lives of these figures, but I'd guess they're not; there's just a little too much killing and over-the-top violence for them to feel real (but strange things can and do happen).

I think this film is also known as Champion of Death sometimes, but Karate Bullfighter sounds better to me, and there is a scene where the film does indeed live up to that crazy title. It's one of the more impressive scenes technically, but it also could've been one where a real animal was getting hurt; it's a bit hard to tell. You can compliment it for feeling authentic, but at the same time, the authenticity is quite grisly and potentially upsetting for some.

Besides that, it's fairly standard stuff. Sonny Chiba is good, there's some energetic camerawork, but it also feels a little dull in places, even though the runtime is less than 90 minutes. It's good enough for those who really like down-and-dirty martial arts movies, but I don't think it's for everyone by any means, and isn't quite a highlight for Chiba (even though he is quite good here, considering what he's given).

This film is a biography of Korean karate master Oyama, whose students include the actor that drew me to watch this film, Sonny Chiba. I wasn't sure how I felt about a film about someone who, ignore the one heroic bull fight shown here, he did make a career out of "fighting" and killing tamed and tethered bulls with his bare hands; given my feeling on blood sports generally, this seemed to be a rung down the ladder from even those. That said I thought I'd watch the film to see what Chiba could do. The first thing that hits you is that the film has dated and unfortunately it is well enough made that it has not dated in a cheesy enjoyable way.

The story told here is interesting enough in its very brisk flit through the early life of Oyama. We see his frustration with the world of karate, his killing in self-defence of a man and his subsequent attempts to make it right in regards the man's widow and young son. There isn't a lot of drama in the telling though and not a great deal of characterisation to gets one teeth into – interesting in the overview to a point but not a gripping story. This leaves the martial arts action to carry the burden and this it does, to a point. The fights are reasonably enjoyable but they are pretty "straight" in their delivery with very little in the way of impressive choreography or design to them. They aren't helped much by the very shaky camera which doesn't look like a deliberate choice since it tends to detract rather than add (those that think the Bourne movies etc just have "shaky cameras" should watch this to see the difference between it working as a device and not working as a device). The actions and tough standoffs are quite good though, but having Chiba in there makes them a bit better.

As a physical presence I didn't see here why he has a big name, since to my amateur eye he is not as good as others I have seen make it into film, but he does have a decent presence as a leading man in this film. Yamaguchi maybe doesn't make this a thrilling martial arts film that I was hoping for, but there are some very good locations that are used well, a rain storm, the long grass of fields etc that I thought looked better than they played out.

Maybe I'll try the rest of this short series of films from Chiba, but on the basis of this one I'm not so sure. It lacked a strong plot and characters to draw me in and the action was solid but not spectacular or thrilling. Still a solid martial arts film, but not a great deal more than that.