Where the Street Fighter finally goes soft and learns to care for someone other than himself.
The big boss has died, but where did he hide his secret stash of cocaine?
The underboss is in jail, leaving two rival brothers to contend for control of the rackets, and each thinks the other knows where the coke is hidden.
The former big boss's girlfriend also wants the drugs for herself, and so does karate warrior for hire Sonny Chiba!
Complicating things for Sonny is the appearance of an antique ronin Samurai and his young son.
Sonny respects the father, as a fellow man on honour, and comes to care about the cute little boy.
After much scheming and double crossing (and much ass kicking and graphic limb severing, not to mention sadistic groping and whipping of half naked women!) Sonny discovers where the drugs have been hidden, however the Samurai also turns up to claim it.
The two accept the inevitable and have a final showdown, after which the dying Samurai asks Sonny to take his son back to his mother.
Sonny does so, but the mother has remarried, had another child and does not want him.
The boy runs crying to the beach with a distraught Sonny following and trying to comfort him.
Then the underboss and remaining henchmen arrive, so Sonny has to take time out from his moral dilema to kick some more ass.
He mops up the last of the villains only to find the boy has been scattering the coke into the sea, thinking it is his fathers ashes.
Sonny is angry at first, but eventually the kid melts his stoney heart and they walk off down the beach together.
The fashions are the usual 70s outrageous, one guy in particular has a yellow wing collar that spans his shoulders, but Sonny himself gets off lightly in this one, his leather jacket and wastecoat ensemble is relatively tasteful.
Many criticise the filming of action scenes in Chiba movies, and I understand it can be frustrating when a competent martial artists technique is somewhat obscured by camera trickery when it's not needed, but on relfection I find the approach in these movies to be more of a plus than a minus.
These are inventive action sequences full of movement and impact, far superior to say, a Chuck Norris movie.
In fact you could argue they are ahead of their time, as the mix of fast to slow mo technique used here has come into vogue in the 2010s.
My favourite line "I love you kid, like a son, but I killed your father, and one day when you grow up, you may want to kill me, and I won't want to be killed, so I don't want you around".
Number 3 on my Chiba hit list.
Review of Karate Warriors
