Return of the Street Fighter (Blu-ray)

Sonny Chiba is back and he's meaner than ever in this notoriously gritty sequel to the wildly successful martial arts classic The Street Fighter. This time around, Chiba's Takuma Tsurugi is hired by the Japanese mobster Otaguro (Ko Tanaka) to slay two employees to prevent them from informing on Otaguro's nefarious Mob related activities. However, when Otaguro orders Tsurugi to kill his old friend Masaoka (Masafumi Suzuki), Tsurugi refuses and is forced to go on the run. To add more spice to the proceedings, Junjo (Masashi Ishibashi), Tsurugi's old nemesis, has reappeared and has his sights firmly set on a bloody revenge. Raising the bar for martial arts movies, the hyper-violent Return of the Street Fighter's many highlights include an inspired final showdown between Chiba and his multiple adversaries. Epic in scale and execution, the sequence has influenced filmmakers from Quentin Tarantino to Takeshi "Beat" Kitano.