B. Lee – no explanation needed.
So before we went on vacation in MX last week, I finished watching all of Bruce Lee‘s movies and a couple related documentaries. Not having seen any of BL’s movies despite being a fan of Jet Li and Jackie Chan and other martial-arts movies for quite some time is kind of like being a Star Trek fan and never having watched the original series – Blasphemy!
There are some earlier (fictional) shows out there with BL in them (not as the main star though) – namely the 60s TV series The Green Hornet (he is Kato, the ass-kicking sidekick); and Longstreet (BL plays a martial-arts guru teaching the main character).
And then here are the four full, original Bruce Lee movies out there where he is the central star:
Fists of Fury (The Big Boss) – This was the first of his 3 HK movies – this has a bit of wire work in it (even BL cannot just ‘jump’ over a 12-ft metal fence) but pretty good stuff. What I like is the way the boss of the ice factory tries to co-op people and if they don’t comply, whammo! But no other spoilers – check it out!
Fist of Fury – (remade more recently with Jet Li as Fist of Legend) – where the main character returns to his wushu martial arts school after the master is mysteriously killed, and vengance ensues! The Jet Li remake is a bit more polished and has a bit more plot and character development, but both movies are equally good.
The Way of the Dragon – a man comes to help a Chinese restaurant in Rome, Italy from the mob trying to take it over. This is the one where BL ultimately fights Chuck Norris (in all his TX-hairy-chest-homoerotic glory). I was very surprised at the start of this to see it was set in Italy – definitely a different feel to it for that reason alone. Also, there are a number of comedic touches throughout this movie that aren’t in the earlier two. They aren’t on the level of say Jackie Chan slapstick-style comedy, but prove that BL has some range as an actor, he’s not *just* about serious ass-kicking. 🙂
And finally, Enter the Dragon. This is the big ‘Hollywood movie’ that sadly came out only a few days after BL passed away and helped cement him as an international and permanent star – this was his first big movie in the USA and elsewhere, compared to his already huge stardom in Asia based on the earlier HK movies. The movie is in many ways like a James Bond movie (without the flashy gadgets or Q branch), with BL being an investigator sent to a mysterious island run by an enigmatic martial-arts ‘lord’ suspected of many criminal enterprises. John Saxon is good as BL’s co-star, and there are many great fight scenes, including a young Jackie Chan getting his neck broken by BL as he infiltrates the underground complex but then sets off a bunch of alarms and has to fight his way out.
The movie BL was working on when he got the call from Hollywood regarding Enter the Dragon was to be called Game of Death. He had filmed many of the penultimate fight scenes in it (incl. some former students as his opponents and/or henchmen, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) but with his passing the movie was never completed. Later some film execs took the footage and hacked it into a ‘movie’ with archival footage and other lame attempts at using doubles, etc. with a completely different plot than BL intended. However, all the original footage and a detailed plot discussion of the original script can be seen at the end of the Bruce Lee: A Warrior’s Journey documentary – definitely worth checking out. And you will obviously see where QT/Uma Thurman got the idea for her yellow suit in Kill Bill.
BL is even more amazing (IMHO) when you think about the following:
a) he was only 32(!) when he passed away;
b) for such a huge, huge star he only has a handful of movies and/or onscreen appearances;
c) he not only broke barriers in Hollywood but in society generally against racism and cultural understanding. To this day he serves as a huge inspiration for anyone/everyone who knows about him. Some of the documentaries touch on this (e.g. How Bruce Lee Changed the World) point specifically.
Finally, there is the ‘lost interview‘ available on VHS (I got it and the other movies from the best store on the planet, Scarecrow of course). This is a traveling interview show with some obscure Canadian(?) host who talked to BL for about 40 mins. about his career, experiences in show business and his various philosophies. The interviewer himself is pretty average, but it’s interesting to simply see BL just talk about his life and career and a bit about society too. And you can definitely tell he’s a child of the 60’s – he says ‘man’ in about every other sentence – it would have been so interesting to see how his career and life might have gone had he lived.
I’ll leave you with one of the quotes from the interview: “Be like water, my friend.” You will have to watch either the interview tape or the documentary mentioned above to get more on that one 🙂
candybowl
Tags: 60's, 70's, Asia, fun!, inspiration, martial arts, movies, mythology, Seattle