Bruce Lee Triple Bill - The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon! 

Bruce Lee's Hong Kong films can best be described as unsophisticated and were made very quickly and very cheaply. They derive from the Chinese theatrical tradition where nothing is ever too subtle and to say the humour doesn't always translate beyond its intended audience would be something of an understatement. However, you do not watch a Bruce Lee film for the acting, story or cinematography. You watch a Bruce Lee film to see Bruce Lee performing dexterous athletic feats and uncanny kicks and punches beyond the realm of most mortals. Lee wasn't quite an overnight success but once he got his start in films there was never any doubt that he was going to become a huge star. He was charismatic, intelligent, highly skilled, lightning quick, incredibly dedicated, and a master at choreographing fight sequences. He only made five films before his premature death but they were enough in the end to make him one of the pop culture icons of the 20th Century. Lee revolutionised the Hong Kong film industry and martial arts genre and paved the way for everyone and everything from Jackie Chan to The Matrix. It's fair to say that he was somewhat ahead of his time (especially when one considers the influence of Hong Kong cinema on Hollywood in recent years).

Lee was born in San Francisco but grew up in Hong Kong. He returned to the United States as a teenager and soon became obsessed with becoming the greatest martial artist he could possibly be. Hollywood actors like Steve McQueen and James Coburn became his students and when he started giving public demonstrations of his kung fu, television executives were impressed enough to start providing screentests and a little acting work here and there. But it was Hong Kong that he would eventually have to turn to in the end to become a real star. The Big Boss was directed by Lo Wei and released in 1971. It was Bruce Lee's first leading film role although he'd already appeared on American television, most famously in The Green Hornet - a sister show to Adam West's Batman. Lee played Kato, a masked kung fu chauffeur sidekick to the crime fighting Green Hornet. The Green Hornet was axed after a year and Lee didn't care much for the part of Kato anyway. He was increasingly frustrated by his lack of opportunities and progress in the United States but pleasantly surprised to learn that he was more famous in Hong Kong where The Green Hornet - and the character of Kato in particular - had been popular.

Lee decided that he would have to take one step back to take two steps forward. Actors like Clint Eastwood had become famous and icons of the screen by making films abroad before they had any great success in Hollywood and he would do the same. The difference being that "abroad" in this case was home. Lee signed a two film contract with Golden Harvest Studios for $15,000. It wasn't a fortune but it was a start in films and Lee also got his air fare to the shooting location in Bangkok paid as part of the deal (he wasn't too impressed though when he arrived in Bangkok and found himself in a tiny insect infested hotel with no air conditioning and water that wasn't safe to use). Golden Harvest were run by a man named Raymond Chow and at that time their modest headquarters consisted of a collection of shacks in Kowloon. Chow was a former employee at the more famous Shaw Brothers studios in Hong Kong but now he was their bitter rival and no love was lost between the two companies.

Chow and Run Run Shaw had competed in something of a battle to sign Bruce Lee but Chow won in the end because Shaw's initial offer was derisory. By the time he made a more tempting and respectful one, Bruce Lee had already signed to the fledgling Golden Harvest and felt duty bound to honour his contract. It was Bruce Lee that established Golden Harvest as a force in Hong Kong cinema and they went on to enjoy considerable success in the future with Jackie Chan (who appears in a couple of these films as a stuntman and took a few kicks from Bruce Lee for his art). Lee was strongly advised by some of his famous actor friends in Hollywood not to sign a deal in Hong Kong under any circumstances. The money was terrible and Golden Harvest were yet to become a player in Hong Kong and famed for cranking out bargain basement martial arts films that were practically indistinguishable from one another. The Big Boss had a total budget of $100,000, which was peanuts even in 1971. You probably couldn't even have made a commercial in the United States for that money let alone a full length film.

Golden Harvest films were usually rushed into production with a brief outline or premise rather than a screenplay and shot with no sound so everything could be dubbed later. An unimpressed Lee watched some of these films and felt sure that he could do much better, especially of course when it came to the fight sequences. He had no choice in the end but to take over the production of the film as much as possible and quickly realised life with Golden Harvest wasn't going to be easy when he would sometimes turn up for work on the set and find he was the only person there! The original director Wu Chai Wsaing was so obnoxious and rude to the cast and crew he was swiftly fired and his replacement Lo Wei wasn't much better. Wei and Bruce Lee did not get on at all. Lee thought Wei was lazy and a terrible director while Wei dubbed the actor a hypochondriac and later made a ludicrous claim that he'd personally taught Bruce Lee how to fight on the set of The Big Boss! In The Big Boss, Bruce Lee is Cheng Chao An, a young man who has moved to Thailand to escape a troubled past and start a new life in a country where his cousins Hsu Chien (James Tien) and Chiao Mei (Maria Yi) are already living. Chen has made a promise to his mother that he will not get into any more trouble and - most of all - never fight again despite being highly skilled in the art of kung fu.

In order to remind himself of this vow Cheng Chao An wears his mother's locket around his neck. Early on he witnesses a girl at a roadside drinks stall being bothered by some louts and wistfully gazes at the locket instead of leaping into action. You don't need to be a genius to work out that this restraint is not going to last for the duration of the story. Cheng gains some employment at the local ice factory but the vow he made to never get into any trouble or throw a punch in anger is about to be put to the most severe test. Two of the the workers discover that some of the blocks of ice are being used to transport drugs and when they get too curious for their own good they are killed by the goons of "The Big Boss" of the factory Hsiao Mi (Yin-chieh Han). The other workers soon become suspicious about the missing pair and go on strike. Hsiao Mi (the boss in case you'd forget) has no tolerance whatsoever for workers banging on about missing employees and slacking off and sends some of his heavies in to put a stop to this militant protest and a violent pitched battle breaks out between the the Chinese workers and the Thai goons. But Cheng honours his promise to his mother and keeps his beak out of this mass brawl. Until that is a metal hook hits him in the head and he finally enters the fray, dispensing with dozens of Thai heavies in classic Bruce Lee fashion.

The boss, noting the remarkable fighting skills of the young Chinese upstart, decides to use divide and conquer tactics. He promotes Cheng and gets him drunk at a party so it looks like he is consorting with prostitutes (though in reality Cheng is always the innocent). Cheng is now ostracised by the other workers and considered to be a complete sell-out and fraud but he has a chance to become a hero again when he discovers the truth about the operation run by the crooked Hsiao Mi. The fact that The Big Boss is not the most lavish production ever committed to film is apparent right from the start with the shaky titles at the start and the terrible jazz muzak that punctuates some of the action. It was certainly an eventful introduction to the Hong Kong film industry for Lee with the two inept directors and the script consisting of a couple of ideas scribbled down on paper. Lee took it upon himself to take over as the choreographer of the fight sequences and also did his best to come up with more of a story, practically making it up as they shot. He also had to contend with a badly sprained ankle from a jump and a terrible fever. Lee would have to get injections for back pain after every scene and the shoot quickly became something of an ordeal to him.

Despite all the problems - and The Big Boss looking as if it cost less to produce than an episode of Prisoner Cell Block H - there is ample compensation for your time whenever Bruce Lee is pressed into action as Cheng. Hong Kong kung fu films were incredibly comic book at the time with exaggerated feats of flying through the air and wielding weapons. Lee was a new type of martial arts hero in that most of what he did seemed plausible yet was still remarkable. In fact, he was so fast he sometimes had to slow down his kicks and punches in fight scenes because they only registered as a blur otherwise. The film drags a little at the start when the reluctant Lee is still bound by the vow to his mother not to fight and also struggles to maintain one's interest a little when our hero is temporarily attracted to the temptations thrown his way by Mi but the fight sequences themselves are superbly orchestrated and Lee has great presence. He just looks iconic even when he isn't doing anything and the (deliberate) absence of too much dialogue in these films always works in his favour. 

Lee's  final showdown with The Big Boss is well staged (even if Yin-chieh Han does look like a complete wimp!) and the Bangkok locations work quite well. The Big Boss was never going to be Lawrence of Arabia but as far as these things go isn't bad at all. One thing you do notice about the film though is that it seems rather gruesome compared to the other Bruce Lee pictures. When Lee wields a knife and slashes someone you see stage blood like something out of Friday the 13th and a particularly violent scrap results in someone being offed with a saw. It's like a kung fu video nasty at times and I was surprised at just just how bloody it got. The Big Boss is raw and cheap and has unintentionally comic moments with the terrible music and broad performances but it's got Bruce Lee in it and that's all you really need to know.

Fist of Fury was directed by Lo Wei and released in 1972. Like The Big Boss this went into production with not much more than an outline by way of story and also had to get around what was by Western standards a minuscule budget. The production values are modest but Fist of Fury does seem a little more professional than The Boss on the whole. Not that this is saying an awful lot but a Spaghetti-Western style soundtrack has been added and as ever one forgets about the crudeness and bargain basement nature of the film when Bruce Lee is onscreen displaying his athletic prowess and punching and kung fu kicking. As usual the film was shot with no sound and then dubbed later on. Legend has it that Lee had to be restrained from throttling the inept director Lo Wei again because Wei was more interested in the racetrack than the film and would have commentary from whatever horse race he had bet on that afternoon blaring away on a loudspeaker while they were trying to shoot the picture. Despite the haphazard nature of the production this was the film that made Bruce Lee a mythic Chinese hero and was something of a personal breakthrough (although he would only become an international star posthumously through Enter the Dragon), breaking box-office records in Hong Kong.

Fist of Fury was a huge hit in the Philippines and Singapore, so much so that some Far Eastern markets eventually withdrew Fist of Fury to give their own domestic films a fighting chance in cinemas. The success of the picture in its more native markets resides in Fist of Fury's straight ahead playing on the deep animosity between China and Japan with the Japanese very much the villains. The story is set in the early part of the last century and was inspired by the real life death of a Chinese martial arts teacher named Ho Yuan Chia. Bruce Lee plays Chinese folk hero Chen Zhen, a student and martial arts expert who arrives in Shanghai (where the Japanese have of course established a strong political presence) to visit his old master and teacher Huo Yuanjia. Chen is distraught to learn that his master has died and is immediately suspicious of foul play as Huo appeared to be in perfect health and was known for being someone who stood up against Japanese intimidation.

The memory of his late master is then insulted by Mi Wu (Paul Wei), an oleaginous Chinese who works for the Japanese as a translator. Mi Wu arrives at Chen's old Chinese Jingwu martial arts school with students from the Japanese Bushido School. They present a banner inscribed with the words "To the Sick Nation of Eastern Asia" and goad Chen and the Chinese students, declaring that the Japanese are the superior race and the superior martial artists. Chen is so infuriated he goes to the Japanese martial arts school and defeats all of the students (and their master) in vicious combat before making them tear up the insulting banner Mi Wu presented them with. Chen is now a wanted man and must go into hiding. He is still though determined to get to the bottom of the death of Huo and avenge his beloved master. This is one of the most violent of the Bruce Lee films although in terms of action it actually seems to have the least amount of fighting sequences. The film shamelessly mines the resentment the Chinese still felt towards the Japanese after centuries of conquest and hostility and so the villains are completely one dimensional and have no humanity or shades of grey whatsoever.

When Lee defiantly insisted that the Chinese were not a "sick nation" in the Japanese dojo and angrily kung fu kicked a sign in a park that said "No dogs and Chinese allowed", Hong Kong Chinese audiences stood up and cheered in cinemas, delighted to suddenly have this charismatic and apparently superhuman new film hero proudly declaring his pride in China. Lee only has two major fight sequences in the film but he makes the most of them. One occurs in the Japanese martial arts school and the other near the end when Chen's revenge mission lands him in a traditional Japanese garden with bridges and pools (the crafting of this garden was responsible for swallowing most of the tiny production budget). The fight in the Japanese school is excellent and remains influential (Jet Li riffed on it twice - in a remake of Fist of Fury entitled Fist of Legend and in the later Kiss of the Dragon). Lee, who looked down his nose at karate, took particular pleasure in filming a sequence where his own fluid and collective fighting system Jeet Kune Do was too much for traditional Japanese martial artists with their rigid doctrines.

This seems to be the film where Bruce Lee started to noticeably make a lot of strange wailing cries as he dispenses with his overmatched opponents and the effect is strangely compelling despite the fact that it has become (with the possible exception of jokes about dubbing) the most lampooned cliche of this genre. Even in the English language version Lee's cries and wails are his own. The dubbing is comical but then these films are only really supposed to be watched with subtitles in my view. Lee is much more volatile here than in the other films and seems to be tightly coiled with an anger and frustration he can barely contain. Chen kills a lot of people too without too much concern (something that Jackie Chan studiously avoided when he picked up Lee's baton as the premier star of Hong Kong Golden Harvest cinema) and Bruce Lee's athleticism, grace and speed is as always astonishing at times. You also of course get the nunchucka (the wood sticks connected by a chain that can be swung and used to strike people) capers reinstated too. If you've only ever watched these films on British television you'd be surprised at times at how much they cut and nunchuckas for some reason seemed to be a particular problem for British censors.

I've never watched a Bruce Lee film and then had an overwhelming urge to go out and maim someone with some homemade nunchuckas myself but some censor obviously thought otherwise! Lee used slightly lighter than usual ones in the film and his dexterity with them is balletic. It's an art. There are a few silly bits that grate somewhat amongst the more rational (and always enjoyable) fight sequences. Lee performs a highly unlikely leap at one point that looks as if it had the obvious aid of a trampoline and also lifts a rickshaw up as if he has super strength. Bruce Lee didn't really need any gimmicks like this to appear as if he was an extraordinary hero onscreen and these moments simply detract our attention from and threaten to diminish his more believable but uniquely sublime athletic exhibitions and high speed kicks and punches. The other characters are mostly hopeless caricatures and it is only Chen Zhen who seems to have any complexity or ability to think about the consequences of his actions. His thirst for revenge puts his old school and the Chinese students in danger and he must ponder whether or not his actions have gone against what he has been taught.

The film establishes the intrigue and danger that exists between the Chinese and Japanese martial arts schools and there is much scheming between them (and one big confrontation) but one often feels that the potential of this premise is never quite fulfilled and that Fist of Fury never really becomes the bargain basement epic it might have been in more capable hands. You have to put up with an awkward romantic sub-plot involving Lee and Nora Miao as the fiancee too. I don't think Bruce Lee was ever going to become a romantic hero! He was the strong silent type. The hero who must always stand alone. Things threaten to get too risible for their own good when Chen adopts a series of Inspector Clouseau type disguises to go undercover amongst the Japanese but Fist of Fury - like all of Bruce Lee's films - delivers the goods in the fight sequences and remains good low-budget fun.

Way of the Dragon is a 1972 film that Bruce Lee directed and conceived himself. The success of Fist of Fury made Bruce Lee a superstar in Hong Kong and the Far East and his two picture contract with Golden Harvest and Raymond Chow had now expired. What he really wanted to do was land the lead role in The Warrior - a television series he had frequently tried to pitch to Warners and the ABC network in the United States about a serene wandering Shaolin warrior-priest in the Old American West who is reluctant to use his deadly martial arts skills but will do so to help those in desperate need. Lee was devastated when he got a telegram from Warners telling him that he would not be involved in the series as his casting had been rejected by the network. The Warrior was renamed Kung Fu and - to add insult to injury - the part of the Chinese warrior-priest that Lee had so coveted went to the white American actor David Carridine. With Hollywood apparently not yet ready to cast a Chinese actor in such a leading role, Lee set about setting up his next Hong Kong project instead. Now out of contract, he turned down numerous offers, including one from Shaw Brothers - who were still mortified on missing out on signing the rising star in the first place and promised him twenty times more than whatever Golden Harvest were paying.

Lee still though took full advantage of the strength his sudden fame and adulation had given him. He met with Raymond Chow and suggested that instead of signing a new contract with Golden Harvest they should become partners and set up a new production company to make more films for the studio. Chow would look after the business side and Lee would have full creative control over his work. Chow was in no position to argue (even a half-share association with Bruce Lee was like sitting on a goldmine in Hong Kong) and abandoned the plans he'd had for Lo Wei direct Lee in a film called Yellow-Faced Tiger. Lee wanted nothing more to do with Lo Wei after the disinterested and amateurish fashion in which the director had approached Fist of Fury and decided he would write and direct his next film. With his new found autonomy and freedom (and a slightly larger if still hardly lavish budget of $130,000), Lee enthusiastically began work on Way of the Dragon.

Having turned the Hong Kong film industry upside down (studios were not used to having terms dictated to them by actors), Lee wanted to challenge preconceived notions of what people expected from Hong Kong kung fu films (most of which he thought were absolutely terrible). Way of the Dragon would import Western martial arts stars to fight Lee and would also be the first Hong Kong film to shoot in Europe. As it turned out though, Way of the Dragon was as raw and cheapjack onscreen as his first two films but it did feature one of the greatest and most famous fight scenes of his career and if you can get through the less than subtle acting, slapstick, and idiotic and occasionally incomprehensible interludes then there is some fantastic material involving Bruce Lee to reward you. In the film Bruce Lee plays Tang Lung, a simple country boy who leaves Hong Kong to help his cousin Chen Ching Hua (Nora Miao) and other family members who run a restaurant in Rome. A worried Chen explains that the restaurant she inherited is situated on land wanted by the Mafia. The Mafia have been sending heavies to intimidate the staff and drive away customers and she is at her wits end.

As expected (by the audience anyway) Tang proves to be more than a match for these Mafia goons when he arrives at the restaurant and his incredible kung fu skills have the Mafia heavies scuttling away to lick their wounds and the Chinese waiters at the restaurant hugely impressed and eager for martial arts lessons from their unexpected new protector. But the Mafia boss (John T Benn) and his lieutenant Ho (Wei Ping Ao) are not ready to give up on the land so easily. They intend to use bullets and if that doesn't work have hired three highly skilled foreign martial artists to challenge and hopefully defeat Tang. A Japanese karate instructor (played by Korean Hapkido master Hwang In-Shik) and American karate stars Bob Wall and Chuck Norris as characters named "Fred" and "Colt" respectively. Some famous confrontations are now on the horizon.

Way of the Dragon is often played as a comedy (the character played by Lee is frequently much lighter and more naive than the one he played in Fist of Fury) and the most polite thing to say is that the humour doesn't always work if you are not Chinese and sitting in a Hong Kong cinema in the early seventies. When Bruce Lee arrives in Rome at the start of the film there are some fairly bizarre and not very funny antics involving his search for a toilet and Tang ordering several bowls of soup in a restaurant by mistake because he doesn't understand the local lingo. Every single joke and sight gag is hammered home by the somewhat annoying wah wahs on the soundtrack - just in case we had missed any of these side splitting interludes. What is interesting here is the way you have to wait about half an hour before Bruce Lee actually does anything in the way of fighting. It's as if he knows that's the only reason anyone is watching this film so he's going to make you wait and look at something else first.

The pedestrian early pace of the film and the comic vignettes (and the fact that it appears to be rather similar in plot to The Big Boss) make one fear for the worst but Way of the Dragon becomes something of a cheese laden minor cult classic once it finally kicks into gear. There are some great scenes where Lee practices his kung fu alone and the sequences where he gives the Chinese waiters some lessons in an alley behind the restaurant are hugely enjoyable. Tang kicks a punching bag and sends the man who was holding it flying in comic fashion. These moments are of course much more natural and amusing than Bruce Lee ordering eight bowls of soup or desperately needing to use the bog. The use of Western martial artists in a Hong Kong film was revolutionary at the time and the imposing Bob Wall (who went on to star with Lee in Enter the Dragon) is good value as usual. Wall was fully prepared to take a few hits for real for the sake of authenticity and so his fight sequences are as ever very good.

Chuck Norris (rest in peace) was completely unknown at the time as far as acting went but a real life karate champion of some distinction. His showdown with Lee inside the Colosseum in Rome is the highlight of the picture and one of the most memorable sequences Lee was ever involved in. The pair confront one another with the respect and formality of samurai warriors and an epic contest ensues. Bruce Lee cast Norris because he found that few martial artists or stuntmen were fast enough to believably fight him onscreen. Norris was different and it made their staged fight much more authentic and all the more inspired for the setting (although the Colosseum backdrop sometimes looks noticeably fake when the location footage in Rome cuts to studio interiors). Lee spent nearly 50 hours working on the scene and choreographing with Norris and if a single movement wasn't to his liking he would scrap it and reshoot until it was perfect. The respect of the two combatants as they fight to the death is rather touching and there are some clever little touches. Lee snatching a clump of the hirsute Chuck's chest hair in his hand and the fact that their only audience is a stray kitten.

Notice how Lee eventually becomes more limber and fluid and bounces up and down on his toes in order to become more unpredictable and harder to hit for his opponent. He was inspired by watching film of master defensive boxers Muhammad Ali and Willie Pep and wanted to show how a dexterous and versatile fighting system would be too much for the rigidity of karate. Not sure how Chuck Norris felt about this but he was a friend of Lee and just happy to be in the film I suppose. Maybe it never occurred to him much at the time. While there is never any doubt about who is going to win (Bruce Lee was the writer, director and star!) I like the way they make the fight competitive with a bit of ying and yang. One thing worth mentioning here is that the villains try to shoot Bruce Lee with guns. This is worth discussion because guns were something of a rarity in old kung fu films and probably led to countless people decades later shouting "Why don't they just shoot him?" at their television screen. Bruce Lee uses blow darts to disable those trying to shoot him here and the absence of guns in most kung fu films was not merely a convenient plot contrivance. Places in the Far East like Hong Kong and Singapore had experienced the British tradition of unarmed police and strict gun control and so really did settle their disputes with their fists! Way of the Dragon is another good bad film. It's often terrible but brilliant when Lee is doing something. I must mention Wei Ping Ao too. The campest villain sidekick in cinema history and what a terribly evil laugh!

 -Jake

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