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This
momentous DVD marks the finale of an important trilogy in the career of
Sonny Chiba. Karate
For Life also happens to be a good, traditional Chiba outing: lots of
hand to hand combat, lots of melodrama and a hefty dollop of exploitation
weirdness to drive it all home.
This was the last entry in a series of films
Chiba
made to pay tribute to his sensei, Masutatsu Oyama. Karate
For Life is slightly more sedate than its two predecessors - no karate
vs. animal brawls like the ones depicted in Karate
Bullfighter and Karate
Bearfighter - but that doesn't mean it is lacking in excitement. For
proof, one need look no further than the opening sequence, which depicts
Oyama walking into a dojo and taking on its sensei AND his 100 students.
It's vintage
Chiba
and one helluva way to get started.
After this bracing opener, it is revealed that Oyama has become a yakuza
bodyguard after being barred from mainland karate organizations. A
promoter offers him a trip to fight in U.S.-occupied
Okinawa
. Unfortunately for Oyama, he neglects to read the fine print and ends up
fighting yakuza-rigged wrestling matches against American bruisers while
drunken G.I.'s cheer. Oyama is too proud to fake his way through them and
ends up stranded in
Okinawa
. He befriends the group of war orphans who try to rob him as well as a
prostitute (Yoko Natsuki) who is sister to one of the boys. When she falls
ill, Oyama makes a return to the wrestling ring. Things don't play out the
way the mob expects, leading to retaliation from the yakuza. It's the last
straw for Oyama and, with the help of judo expert buddy (Shuzo Fujita), he
pays them back for all the suffering he witnessed.
It all adds up to a very entertaining Sonny Chiba vehicle. The storyline
sometimes drifts but the film makes up what it lacks in clarity and craft
with sheer gut-level power - it constantly hurls interesting incidents at
the viewer (the wrestling matches are positively surreal) and excels in
the kind of melodramatic manipulation guaranteed to get viewers on
Chiba
's side. More importantly, Karate
For Life offers
Chiba
a plum of a role that allows him to do everything he does well - strut,
emote and kick ass by the truckload.
Karate For Life is also
unusually well-directed for a karate quickie. Director Kazuhiko Yamaguchi
gives the events a stylish widescreen gloss and pulls off some
unexpectedly inspired stylistic flourishes - the best is the haunting
image of an old woman singing a folk tune, accompanied by a lone koto,
used to symbolize the quiet misery of the prostitute character. He
also deploys an effective barrage of stylistic tricks during the fight
scenes: canted angles, fast cutting, deft handheld camerawork, slow motion
and sudden, brief returns to normal speed within the slo-mo to accentuate
a killer blow are all used to dazzling effect.
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