A nice surprise at the end of last year was Shout! Factory releasing The Sonny Chiba Collection, a nifty four blu-ray set that collects seven Chiba titles made between 1972 and 1989.

This box set shows how diverse the genre could be, delivering good cops-vs.-crooks programmers as well as a couple of films that mix cop procedural with dark explorations of the criminal mindset and - best of all - a pointed expose of how failings in the justice system could be exploited by the wealthy and unprincipled at the expense of the common man.