When I listed my 45 favorite movies, I briefly mentioned that I had never seen anything from Bruce Lee. I know Bruce Lee by his reputation as a great martial artist whose life tragically ended early. From there, various fake Bruces popped up, and then his own son Brandon suffered a similar tragically short life. But I’d never seen any of Bruce’s actual movies before.
Then I saw Netflix currently has Enter the Dragon and decided to rectify that.
Bruce here stars as Lee, a Shaolin martial artist and instructor. So, right from the get-go, we get to see Bruce do his martial arts thing as the opening credits roll. Now, I had expected this movie to be something of a martial arts stereotype as Lee goes off to bring down some bad guy, possibly responsible for the death of Lee’s teacher, leading to Lee taking down huge scores of bad guys one at a time until he gets into a long, epic fight with the big bad responsible. Now, there is some of that. Lee’s teacher doesn’t die. Indeed, after the first scene or two, the man disappears from the movie.
What there is instead is something I wasn’t expecting at all. Apparently, Enter the Dragon is something of a spy movie.
That comes from the fact that though Lee is recruited to enter a mysterious martial arts tournament held by the only disgraced former member of his order, a man named Han. The reason he’s asked to participate is to find some dirt on Han, an international criminal into sex trafficking and narcotics distribution. Han mostly avoids attention, and British intelligence would really like to know where exactly the man is as well as have some evidence on Han’s criminal activities. To that end, having Lee go in and look around will solve that issue rather nicely.
Now, having Lee go into Han’s tournament by itself could make for a compelling movie. But there’s a bit more. Han has a bodyguard for some reason named O’Harra, and O’Harra murdered Lee’s sister, something Lee only learns before he leaves for the tournment. Likewise, there are two Americans along for the ride, a pair of men who knew each other in the Vietnam War. One, Roper, is a businessman hiding from creditors and needing some quick money. The other, Williams, is an African American man who won’t survive a fight with Han for reasons.
That’s a lot to toss at the audience for a movie running only 102 minutes. And, for what it is worth, I found little of interest in anything involving Roper or Williams. Lee’s nighttime excursions end up getting Williams in trouble, leading to Han murdering Williams using only his martial arts skills. I suppose that was done to show how formidable Han was after knowing Williams was no push-over, and Roper was needed for somewhere else, but it still means the black man died over the other protagonist characters. Then again, as I have already said, I wasn’t much interested in anything Roper or Williams were doing.
No, my interest was in Lee, and that means seeing Bruce demonstrate his martial arts prowess. Does he fight a mob of guards who only attack one at a time? Yes. He beats all of them, including one played by a young Jackie Chan. He likewise kills O’Harra in the tournament, and his longest, most drawn out fight is with Han at the end of the movie. Han may only have one hand, but he’s a clever opponent who can lead to all kinds of problems in a hall of mirrors.
So, was this a good movie? Yes, but again, that was due to whatever Lee was doing. Other plot lines were of less interest to me, but it’s easy to see why someone like Bruce Lee could take the world by storm with a movie like this. I may have to find some of his other films at some point.
Grade: B
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