Like James Dean, martial artist Bruce Lee casts
a long shadow over popular culture despite making precious few films before his
death at a young age. Much of his legend stems from Lee's only completed
Hollywood movie, Enter the Dragon (1973),
which casts the actor as a kung-fu secret agent. The picture hit theaters shortly after Lee died,
creating a mythological quality that still endures. Yet Lee, who first
gained notice among American audiences by playing a sidekick on the short-lived
U.S. superhero show The Green Hornet (1966-1967),
actually notched three starring roles in Hong Kong before making Enter the Dragon. Released many times
under many titles, these pictures often blend into the overall flow of Lee's
filmography, which is further muddied by posthumous releases of partially
completed projects as well as various films starring imitators, such as the
infamous Bruce Li. While many pictures billed as Bruce Lee movies should be
ignored, these three represent the early stages of what should have been a long
and glorious screen career.
The Big Boss, sometimes distributed as Fists of Fury, is generic to the point
of tedium until it gains momentum about halfway through. Set in a quasi-rural
section of Hong Kong, the picture concerns workers at an ice factory who rebel
against their oppressive employers, eventually uncovering a scheme to smuggle
heroin out of the factory in ice blocks. Lee plays Cheng, a martial-arts master
who has promised never to fight again. Staying with relatives who work in the
factory, Cheng watches problems mount without taking action. This doesn't make
a whole lot of sense, seeing as how two of Cheng's friends disappear, and
seeing as how it's plain that the factory's owner (Ying-Chieh Han) is a vile monster.
Once Lee cuts loose, things get fun—he busts out his nunchucks, mows down
opponents with his signature cocksure intensity, and, at one point, whomps a
villain so hard the man's body propels through a wall, leaving a man-shaped
hole in his wake. The Big Boss also
benefits from a slick widescreen look, though the inevitable bad dubbing of the
film's American-release version makes every character sound as chipper as
resident of Mayberry.
Fist of Fury—also known as The Chinese Connection and not to be
confused with The Big Boss' alternate
title, Fists of Fury—improves on its
predecessor by getting to the ass-kicking stuff faster, though character scenes
remain a weakness. Lee plays Chen, former student of a revered teacher at a
Hong Kong martial-arts school. Upon returning home for the teacher's funeral,
Lee discovers that the teacher was likely murdered by conspirators associated
with a competing school. The proprietors of the other school are Japanese, so
national prejudice is a major element of the plot. Throughout Fist of Fury, Lee slips more and more
comfortably into his ideal persona as a larger-than-life badass, righting
wrongs and smiting the intolerant. In one scene, he high-kicks a sign reading
"No Dogs or Chinese Allowed" into a zillion pieces, and in another
scene, he fights his way through an entire school's worth of enemy fighters
without suffering an injury. The iconic moment from Fist of Fury is a gorgeous shot in which Lee stands stock still
except for his hands, which the camera tracks in slow motion so his hands leave
ghost images behind.
Excepting the aborted Game
of Death, which wasn't completed until after Lee died, the actor’s final
film prior to Enter the Dragon was The
Way of the Dragon, which was re-released, after Lee's blockbuster, with
the new title Return of the Dragon.
By any name, The Way of the Dragon is
mediocre at best. Nonetheless, it's noteworthy as the only movie that Lee wrote
and directed, and it contains perhaps the single best fight scene in all
of Lee's filmography—an epic smackdown with American martial artist Chuck
Norris, set inside the Roman Colosseum. Watching these two titans with very
different styles is mesmerizing, because Lee is as fast and graceful as Norris
is relentless and thunderous. Getting to that climactic scene requires
trudging through lots of nonsense. Lee plays Tang, a Hong Kong martial artist
sent to Rome in order to help the lovely Chen (Nora Miao), who owns a Chinese
restaurant in the Italian city. Mobsters want to put the restaurant out of
business, so Tang trains the wait staff to fight while also battling many
adversaries on his own. Early scenes are bogged down in idiotic slapstick, such
as a running gag about Tang's overactive excretory functions, and the acting by supporting players is
wretched. Nonetheless, the Lee-Norris fight has plenty of wow factor.
The takeaway from all three pictures is that Lee was ready for
bigger things. Invariably, he's the best element of each movie, not just
because of his remarkable athleticism but also because of his innate star
power. None of his Hong Kong movies is a classic, but Lee himself was.
The
Big Boss: FUNKY
Fist
of Fury: FUNKY
The
Way of the Dragon: FUNKY
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