Sonny Chiba’s 10 best movies: remembering the Japanese action film legend, who died of coronavirus complications aged 82

Chiba’s career spanned six decades but was at its height in the 1970s, most notoriously with Street Fighter, X-rated in the US solely for its violence

He appeared in several of Kinji Fukusaku’s genre films, played villain Lord Conqueror in The Storm Riders and had a late-career revival under Quentin Tarantino

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Sonny Chiba in a still from Hong Kong film The Storm Riders (1998).

Published: 7:45pm, 20 Aug 2021Updated: 7:45pm, 20 Aug 2021

The impact of the global pandemic continues unabated with the sad news that Japanese action star Shinichi “Sonny” Chiba has died from Covid-19, aged 82.

In a career spanning six decades and close to 200 film and television roles, Chiba was one of Japan’s biggest stars and continued working right up until his death. Fans of contemporary Hong Kong cinema will probably remember him playing the villain Lord Conqueror in The Storm Riders (1998), an effects-heavy martial arts movie.

A black belt in six different disciplines, including karate, judo, and kendo, Chiba originally planned to be a professional athlete, before a back injury forced him to change career paths. He opened his own training school, Japan Action Club, for aspiring action stars and stunt men, choreographed many of his own movies and counts Hiroyuki Sanada among his former students.

Chiba’s best decade was the 1970s. He found international fame as the eponymous star of 1974’s The Street Fighter, as well as its numerous sequels and spin-offs. His character, a morally ambiguous karate expert and mercenary, did battle with a wide array of gangsters, drug dealers and dirty cops in a series of ultraviolent showdowns.

Chiba’s brawler, gruffer and meaner than Bruce Lee’s on-screen persona, was embraced by audiences whose appetites had been whetted by the late Hong Kong star.