“The martial arts is more than fighting,” said Bruce Lee. “It’s a way of thinking, of feeling – it’s a whole new life-style. That’s what makes it work so well on the screen. And that’s why I’m so excited about this film – definitely the biggest I ever made.”
Tragically it also proved his last. Rarely, though, has any film star gone out in such rip-roaring style: the most ferocious action and global queues smashing every cinema box-office record in sight.
Bruce Lee’s legacy is the biggest bonanza in the entire kung-fu movie spectrum; the thriller of the year. Probably of next year, too.
Action all the way. Barely time for taking catching one’s. breath, let alone to think too deeply about the rice-paper thin plot. That’s the key of Enter The Dragon, a kind of Dr. No with a Hong Kong accent, no Ursula Andress of course, but all the knockout finesse that Hollywood only can muster and the most unbelievable fighting stunts that Bruce Lee alone could arrange.
In a word: it’s a knockout!
Not even 007 ever moved this fast and certainly no other movie hero has Bruce Lee’s amazing grace and terrifying war-cry. He moves and sounds like a cockatoo stepping on a hot griddle-but get too near and you’re the one that’s burned!
Lee plays (surprise, surprise) a guy called Lee, top student at Hong Kong’s Shaolin Temple and recruited by some anonymous international intelligence operation to enter a brutal martial arts tournament staged on the sinister island fortress of a certain Han.
For why? To get enough on the wicked Han’s huge opium and call-girl rackets and put the one-handed, monster in jail for life. If not longer.
Lee is not the sole visitor to the games. John Saxon as an inveterate gambler (and must be: he’s already taken on TV’s David Carradine) is in from the States.
So’s Jim Kelly, a black sports celeb in track, baseball, football, karate and now movies; he’s back soon as Black Belt ]ones.
Also involved: Yang Sze, the giant Shotokan champion of S.E. Asia: head-wrenching!
Lee’s midnight explorations of Han’s underground caverns confirm the worst but the little dragon still has one hell of a fight to get out. Like alive.
He takes on Han (Shih Kien) and knocks off everyone else with John Saxon. And all in 98 minutes!