Fukasaku regular Sagawara is Isamu Okita, a bottom-feeding sociopath who blames his misfortune on sharing his birthday with the day Japan unconditionally surrendered to the Allies. Before the opening credits Okita has brawled, murdered, raped and forced girls into prostitution.

Upon being released from prison, he falls in with Kazaki, a timid low-level mobster with ambitions of forming an organization. In Okita Kazaki sees muscle to match his brains, but Okita ignites a mini-street war after scuffling with members of the Takigawa group and a high-level Osaka boss. Perilously wounded, Okita is forced to accept the protection of the Yato gang, Takigawa's chief rival. Life should be smoother with official yakuza endorsement, yet Okita cannot contain his destructive impulses.

A knockabout punch-up of a movie, 'Street Mobster' flamboyantly bloodies the audience's nose with its raw brutality and antisocial behaviour. As usual Fukasaku stresses the direct link between poverty and criminality, and in a rare quiet moment Okita hides out in a prison buddy's failing noodle store, the despair almost peeling off the walls.

What 'Street Mobster' has in social smarts it lacks in sexual politics. Would one of Okita's victim's, abused and sold into vice years before really become his moll and save his life on at least one occasion? But, for all its flaws, stylistically the movie never falters. Fukasaku knows instinctively how to create a sense of danger and chaos with off-kilter camerawork, psychedelic jazz music and committed performances from his cast.

Sagawara boasts the same lethal swagger in the lead role as Malcolm McDowell displayed in 'A Clockwork Orange', and his gurning, dark-side-of-the-moon turn as Okita seems to have influenced every performance by current Japanese B-movie king Riki Takeuchi.

'Street Mobster' boasts the same disregard for likeable characters as Takashi Miike's 'Ichi The Killer', giving some idea of the brutality in store. Ultimately, the film seems knocked out while Fukasaku was prepping 'Battles Without Honour and Humanity' but is recommended for fans of bloody nose moviemaking.

Long before director Kinji Fukasaku created the controversial Battle Royale (2001), he was best known as Japan's premiere director of hard-boiled yakuza films. Street Mobster is one of his earliest and greatest that set off a new wave of ultra-violent and nihilistic crime dramas including his own famed Yakuza Papers series. It's the sixth film in Toei's Modern Yakuza sextet, featuring a variety of directors and unrelated plots, but all starring Bunta Sugawara. In this final film, the charismatic Sugawara brilliantly explodes onscreen in an unrestrained stream of fury and cinematic coolness. Fukasaku's edgy direction expertly uses shaky handheld camerawork, freeze framing and a raw artistic look that gives the film a ballsy vibe that holds up extremely well to any gangster drama to follow. The portrayal of a violent brawler and womanizer burning fast on a short fuse and unable to change as the world around him does still has tremendous impact over thirty years on. Loads of chaotic street fighting and all-around nastiness keeps the blood pumping. This is an unrepentant and masterful work that draws similarities to the early films of Martin Scorsese, Chang Cheh and Sam Peckinpah, but possessing a stylish level of violence all its own.