By the far Bruce Lee's best film, I couldn't stop watching it, in the end I erased it. It got too much. This started the whole martial arts genre, the craze, it gave hope to bullied kids at school who now realised they could defend themselves and gain confidence at the same time, Bruce style. Of course back in the 70's only the rich and famous would train with Bruce, like Steve McQueen and various others. The film starts with the bad guy chasing Bruce's sister (who really is Bruce's sister in real life) she commits suicide rather being raped. This fuels Bruce's determination to 'enter the dragon' or the competition on some Far Eastern island. The competition is a martial arts death match with the victor the richer if he survives. Now there are some strange actors in this film. John Saxon was cast as the American to woe the Western audience as Hollywood felt Bruce was too oriental for American tastes to be the complete and utter star. Unfortunately John's martial arts left a lot to be desired! This was not the last time that Hollywood felt it needed Western blood to entice Western audience’s, Anyone remembers the series called Kung Fu with David Carriden? Well this was written for Bruce Lee to star, but again the producer’s chickened out. Watch out for the cameo of Jackie Chan- he is in it for preciously 15 seconds getting his head snapped by Bruce Lee. It’s a little know fact that Jackie Chan's brother was Bruce Lee’s stunt double and actually did the famous flip when Bruce was fighting O’Hara.
Bruce basically takes on a whole army single-handed, only Bruce could have pulled this off and looked good at the end of it!
This film still holds its appeal over 25 years after being made. A must for anyone interested in the Martial arts genre.
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Production Year: 2002 - Action/Adventure - Director: Vincenzo Natali - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring:Lucy Liu, David Hewlett, Anne Marie Scheffler, Joseph Scoren, Matthew Sharp, Jeremy Northam
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Advantages: The majectic Bruce in action, generally entertaining Disadvantages: poor story, bad acting, grainy colour, average sound, last proper Bruce Lee film
Feb 12th, 2001
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