
I bow my head down to the late great master. There is a reason why it sparked the popularity of Martial Arts and helped inspire many others from filmmakers to bodybuilders. The amount of passion put into the film just leaps off the screen and everybody involved deserves an applause. The film is light on plot, but honestly, the plot is not the focus, but rather, an excusable vehicle to showcase Lee's unprecedented work where the villains get what they deserve and the heroes do their best to reach their dreams.

The entire film crew deliver a piece of work that is rich with culture, colours, music, period pieces from the 70s, and of course, action where the post production sound effects make you feel every bone crushing hit the actors deliver to each other. Lee's choreography and super hard work/passion shines especially when placed in well-shot locations that take advantage of different fighting scenarios. The A pop culture gem of a film, watching "Enter the Dragon" is like watching a comic book come to life but without any of the superpowers. Clouse even steals, and quite deftly, from the mirror funhouse scene in Orson Welles’ Lady From Shanghai.A pop culture gem of a film, watching "Enter the Dragon" is like watching a comic book come to life but without any of the superpowers. His work is an excellent example of a genre director proving his ready for more ambitious material. Robert Clouse’s fluid direction brings this three-ring circus to action climax, so to speak, after action climax, wringing full potential out of the production. Lee staged the fight sequences himself, and they lift the movie the way Astaire and Rogers used to when they danced in movies of a different fantasy genre. He’s a strange, otherworldly presence, a man of wisdom who excels at action, who speaks of the emotional content of the fight scorning the notion of anger. Betty Chung is a secret agent inside the fortress.Īhna Capri floats through the movie the way Myrna Loy used to in the early Oriental period of her career, dispensing pretty women to the tired contestants like sleeping pills.īut it’s Bruce Lee’s movie. Geoffrey Weeks is Lee’s English Interpol contact. Yang Sze is Shih’s muscle bound bodyguard. Lees choreography and super hard work/passion shines especially when placed in well-shot locations that take advantage of different fighting scenarios. Peter Archer is an unpleasant New Zealander contestant.īob Wall is the big meanie who murdered Lee’s hapkido belt sister, played by Angela Mao Ying in one astonishing action sequence. A pop culture gem of a film, watching 'Enter the Dragon' is like watching a comic book come to life but without any of the superpowers.

Jim Kelly is equally fine as a black American trying to earn money for the movement. John Saxon is extremely good as a compulsive gambler who joins the contest to find his way out of a losing streak. Kien organizes a martial arts contest, which is actually a front to find salesmen to peddle his wares throughout the world. After an altercation compels young Bruce to leave the country, his. Michael Allin’s inventive screenplay brings Lee to the island fortress of master criminal Shih Kien to find evidence to convict him of white slavery and opium trade. Bruce Lees (Jason Scott Lee) rise begins in Hong Kong, as a young boy receiving traditional Chinese martial arts training. The movie itself, produced by Fred Weintraub and Paul Heller in association with Raymond Chow of Hong Kong’s Concorde Productions, is a whoop-and-holler entertainment, which is to say that it’s a lavish, corny action movie, not boring for a second and as outrageously wry as it is visually appealing. His charismatic presence is remarkable in Enter the Dragon, and it’s a shame he didn’t have the chance to become the great, unique star he seemed destined to be. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review is below:īruce Lee’s last movie is the only one that gives him the star treatment he deserved. unveiled Enter the Dragon, the 98-minute, R-rated actioner starring Bruce Lee, in theaters.
