As a practitioner of Kyokushin Karate, I found it very interesting to see the roots of my martial art. The fact is that this particular style of Karate has been deemed "The Strongest Karate", known for its pad-less FULL contact sparring: consisting of head kicks, body blows, knees to body and head, and body punches. Just no head punching (or it would be to bloody). this movie is about the very first World Tournament of Kyokushin and it is filled with Hard Core training, cheesy 70's music and crazy spinning back heel kicks to the chin making the opponents jaw resemble a cash resister!, or nasty head kicks blasting opponents on the mat twitching and flexing there toes and fingers like there playing a invisible piano. The story also follows a few American fighters as well as a few from other nations and fighting styles as well. It is as informative as it is entertaining. I had DVR'd it about 3 years ago and had it for most of the time but i changed my cable provider and lost it in transition. If i came across it anywhere I would buy it as fast as I could! if you get the chance to see it take advantage of the rare opportunity. As a MMA fighter and Kyokushin Karate fighter i see both the beauty and the brutality of this GOD HAND KARATE. Osu!!!!

I caught this film on digital cable, and as someone who has strong interest in martial arts(especially Martial Arts Competitions) I found this documentary to be highly informative and reasonably entertaining. Essentially it is about a major international Karate tournament that occurred in Japan in mid 70's, but with most of the focus being directed toward 3 African Americans who qualified for and were favored to make a big impact on the Tournament and the international Karate world. This film profiles these three men extensively with interviews and filmed bits of their training as well as their private lives. The film also gives slightly less focus towards some of the other big names from Japan and the world Karate/Martial Arts scene who also participated in this tournament as well. Then of course the film goes on to show a good amount of filmed footage from the tournament itself, showing some of the many breaking and other demonstrations, as well as a good amount of the matches that took place. In addition to all of these things, there are some bits about the history and culture of Karate as well as some similar albeit much briefer treatments for some of the other styles of predominately stand-up fighting(Chinese Kung Fu, Muay Tai, Singaporean Martial Arts) that were represented in this particular tournament. All in all, its a pretty straight forward account of all these things.

I think the film is pretty good for what its trying to be, but if I had to nitpick the biggest flaw here is production value. By today's standards the camera work, and film quality are pretty bad at times. Especially in the actual Tournament fight scenes where the picture is often just a little blurry, and it is clear that they didn't have access to a whole lot of cameras as there not that many different camera angles. In fact, much of the fights are seen in mostly wide-shots. Also some will find the narrator annoying. As in most documentaries, Narration underscores the whole the film, and the Narrator here is very much in that old 70's era style. In fact, he sounds suspiciously like the same guy who narrated all those old film strips in my high school biology class. Personally, I enjoyed the sense of nostalgia his voice-over work provoked but I think some might find it to be a little cheesy. Also bringing up the cheese factor here is the soundtrack. I won't go into too much detail, but lets just say its very 70's. In fact, when you put all of these things together you get down to the fact that this is just a low budget 70's film, and if you can get past that, than none of these things mentioned above should be too much of a problem.

Overall, I feel that if you are martial artist(I'm not BTW) or are interested in martial arts, you should watch this. Its an interesting look at the state of martial arts and martial artists of the day. Yes Karate is the focus, and as another user commented their is definitely a bias towards karate present here, but this is more a product of the time in which this was filmed, when Karate was the most accessible martial art form to study and learn in outside of Asia. As far as the action goes, don't expect a lot of flashy moves(well maybe some). This is straight up full-contact-tournament-style-Karate. The film does highlight the danger of a full contact martial arts event, and many matches shown end due to injuries. However, there is nothing here that I would consider graphic in terms of violence. For those looking for flash, I will say that some of the breaking and other demonstrations are pretty fun to watch.

All in all, I enjoyed this film, and if you are interested in real martial arts, then I think that you will too. Check it out.

This bizarre documentary keeps popping up on the Black Starz premium channel, no doubt because of its title and the fact that three of the competitors in the film were African-American. If you approach this film expecting a Jim Brown asskick-athon, you're going to be deeply disappointed. It's actually a fairly staid look at an important karate championship held in Japan. The film was produced by Japan's Sankyo Motion Picture Company, which may explain why the (extremely brief) English language segments are so badly synced. A little revenge for years of badly dubbed Japanese films, perhaps? Probably of interest only to the hardest of hardcore martial arts buffs, Fighting Black Kings is definitely one of the odder features to pop up on cable.