Director: Robert Clouse
Writer: Michael Allin
Starring: Bruce Lee, Jim Kelly, Kien Shih
This is the first time that I have ever watched a Bruce Lee
movie. I have always heard that they were great. Enter The Dragon may not be a
technical masterpiece but it is brilliantly enjoyable.
Bruce Lee captains an ethnically diverse team of inexplicable martial arts masters. Along with [Bruce Lee] (playing the suspiciously named Lee) a funky fighter from the hood and a gambling addict join the investigation of the shadiest fighting tournament in existence.
One of the great things that ‘Enter the Dragon’ is that it really makes you feel for the characters. At the end of the movie, I really wanted the antagonist to be pummelled by Bruce Lee’s flying fist of fighting fury. I really loved Williams [Jim Kelly] as well. Every time he was on screen, I felt like laughing. This may have been because of the ambiguously racist way that he was written. In one of Williams’ first scenes, he gets unnecessarily stopped by the police and then steals their car using his fighting skills he learnt at the all-black dojo. On the other hand, Roper [John Saxon] was boring by comparison. His character starts and ends at, ‘bets on anything that can be bet on’. Some of the scenes that he is in seem like they were trying to start a romantic sub-plot between Roper and one of the women on the island but Bruce Lee had to come into it somewhere and scooped up all of Roper’s screen time.
Bruce Lee’s existence in the movie is definitely not a bad thing. In fact, I feel that it is probably one of the best things that could have happened to the movie. While Williams is great and will always hold a place in my heart, the movie would be nothing without Bruce Lee acting as an unstoppable martial arts god who can instantly murder people by stamping on their baby-makers. He is basically the embodiment of every great dream that I have, being uncompromisingly powerful. There is a moment when I thought, ‘ is Bruce Lee really going to have the sexual intercourse routine with this woman’. No! Bruce Lee has no need for sexual healing, he just wants to get to the root of the problem and that is stopping the obvious villain.
Where the movie trips up over itself is in its writing. I mentioned earlier Williams’ stereotypically driven traits and Roper’s one-dimensional actions. The rest really isn’t much better. It feels like some guys at Warner Bros. sat down and said, “We want another Bruce Lee movie… fighting tournament! Done.” Nothing too unpredictable happens and many people get hit in the face.
However, the hitting in the face in question is extremely satisfying to watch. There is the scene that almost everybody knows about in which Lee batters endless waves of henchmen (including Jackie Chan) whilst getting better weapons from his fallen enemies. I personally prefer the earlier scene in which Lee fights a man with a scarred face [Robert Wall]. He displays why roundhouse kicks are so incredible for about three minutes and the character he is fighting is written in such a hilarious way. His gimmick is that he can break boards really well… even when they are on fire! He even brings a board into the fighting circle just to break it next to Lee’s face. It’s a brilliantly fun to watch and it really stands out in my mind (especially the fatal testicle-crushing stomp… just the fact that he dies from it is funny to me).
For my first Bruce Lee movie, Enter the Dragon did not disappoint. It delivered the campy hilarity that I expected from seeing the DVD cover and it supplied a Bruce Lee dose of power that should last me at least 6 months. The writing was a little one-dimensional but if you don’t take the movie too seriously, that only adds to the effect. So remember my friends, “boards don’t hit back”.
Enter the Dragon receives a: 8/10
Bruce Lee captains an ethnically diverse team of inexplicable martial arts masters. Along with [Bruce Lee] (playing the suspiciously named Lee) a funky fighter from the hood and a gambling addict join the investigation of the shadiest fighting tournament in existence.
One of the great things that ‘Enter the Dragon’ is that it really makes you feel for the characters. At the end of the movie, I really wanted the antagonist to be pummelled by Bruce Lee’s flying fist of fighting fury. I really loved Williams [Jim Kelly] as well. Every time he was on screen, I felt like laughing. This may have been because of the ambiguously racist way that he was written. In one of Williams’ first scenes, he gets unnecessarily stopped by the police and then steals their car using his fighting skills he learnt at the all-black dojo. On the other hand, Roper [John Saxon] was boring by comparison. His character starts and ends at, ‘bets on anything that can be bet on’. Some of the scenes that he is in seem like they were trying to start a romantic sub-plot between Roper and one of the women on the island but Bruce Lee had to come into it somewhere and scooped up all of Roper’s screen time.
Bruce Lee’s existence in the movie is definitely not a bad thing. In fact, I feel that it is probably one of the best things that could have happened to the movie. While Williams is great and will always hold a place in my heart, the movie would be nothing without Bruce Lee acting as an unstoppable martial arts god who can instantly murder people by stamping on their baby-makers. He is basically the embodiment of every great dream that I have, being uncompromisingly powerful. There is a moment when I thought, ‘ is Bruce Lee really going to have the sexual intercourse routine with this woman’. No! Bruce Lee has no need for sexual healing, he just wants to get to the root of the problem and that is stopping the obvious villain.
Where the movie trips up over itself is in its writing. I mentioned earlier Williams’ stereotypically driven traits and Roper’s one-dimensional actions. The rest really isn’t much better. It feels like some guys at Warner Bros. sat down and said, “We want another Bruce Lee movie… fighting tournament! Done.” Nothing too unpredictable happens and many people get hit in the face.
However, the hitting in the face in question is extremely satisfying to watch. There is the scene that almost everybody knows about in which Lee batters endless waves of henchmen (including Jackie Chan) whilst getting better weapons from his fallen enemies. I personally prefer the earlier scene in which Lee fights a man with a scarred face [Robert Wall]. He displays why roundhouse kicks are so incredible for about three minutes and the character he is fighting is written in such a hilarious way. His gimmick is that he can break boards really well… even when they are on fire! He even brings a board into the fighting circle just to break it next to Lee’s face. It’s a brilliantly fun to watch and it really stands out in my mind (especially the fatal testicle-crushing stomp… just the fact that he dies from it is funny to me).
For my first Bruce Lee movie, Enter the Dragon did not disappoint. It delivered the campy hilarity that I expected from seeing the DVD cover and it supplied a Bruce Lee dose of power that should last me at least 6 months. The writing was a little one-dimensional but if you don’t take the movie too seriously, that only adds to the effect. So remember my friends, “boards don’t hit back”.
Enter the Dragon receives a: 8/10
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