The Street Fighter

Sonny Chiba plays a mercenary with no code and no charm who breaks people apart with an anatomical specificity nobody had filmed before. It was the first film to earn an X in America on violence alone, and it earned it.

Chiba's Terry Tsurugi is an antihero in the literal sense: you are not meant to like him, and the film does not ask you to. The X-ray punch-through-the-skull shot tells you exactly what kind of picture this is.

Brutal, humourless and influential. Travis Bickle watches it in Taxi Driver for a reason.