A Shaolin martial artist travels to an island fortress to spy on an opium lord – who is also a former monk from his temple – under the guise of attending a fighting tournament.
As a kid growing up in Dublin, Ireland, in the ’70s and ’80s, my friends and I were inspired by martial arts films, specifically those of Bruce Lee. While we watched pretty much anything with kung fu in it, including Jackie Chan and Chuck Norris, Bruce Lee always towered high above them all. Why? Because he was the best. And the fastest. We used to rent out his other films, including “The Big Boss,” “Fist of Fury,” “The Way of the Dragon,” and “Game of Death,” and watched them so often the VHS tapes eventually wore out.
“Enter the Dragon” was the first American-produced martial arts epic to include Asian, Black, and White heroic protagonists, as the producers wanted a film that would appeal to the broadest possible international audiences. Lee starred in the movie and choreographed all of the fight sequences himself.
When Lee (Bruce Lee), a skilled and accomplished Shaolin martial artist and instructor, is contacted by British Intelligence regarding an upcoming tournament of martial arts arranged by a suspected crime lord and renegade Shaolin monk named Han (Shih Kien) on his private island off the coast of Hong Kong, he accepts. The mission personally motivates him to infiltrate Han’s compound not just for the task at hand, but also to avenge the death of his younger sister a few years earlier at the hands of Han’s personal bodyguard.
When “Enter the Dragon” was released in August of 1973, it was the first time a major American studio, Warner Bros., in association with Golden Harvest and Lee’s Concord Production Company, financed a large-scale martial arts blockbuster with no big names attached. While Lee was famous internationally, he was only known in America as playing Kato on the short-lived TV show “The Green Hornet,” in which he played second fiddle to the show’s star, Van Williams. John Saxon, who had appeared in numerous films throughout the ’60s and early ’70s in various roles, and was himself a black belt in Shotokan karate, was cast as Roper, an indebted gambling addict. In only his second feature-film role, Jim Kelly was a black belt in the Okinawan Shorin-Ryu style of karate and was cast as a martial artist and friend of Roper’s, both Vietnam War veterans. The rest of the cast comprised primarily of Asian actors and martial artists.
I watched “Enter the Dragon” religiously as a teenager, but it had been some time since I had watched it as an adult. When Warner Bros. sent me a 4K copy to review, I found myself getting engrossed all over again, and when nobody was looking, I wanted to see if I could still do a side kick, knee strike, and roundhouse kick, and much to my surprise, I could. The best way to watch “Enter the Dragon” is to think of it as a James Bond movie; Lee goes undercover for MI6 to infiltrate the bad guy’s lair and ends up fighting the big boss (pun intended), one on one, emerging beaten and bloody to fight another day.
I was also extremely saddened that this was Lee’s last movie and that he died a month before the film’s release. As a teenager, my friends and I, who idolized Lee, were convinced that he wasn’t dead but faked his death and was living on a tropical island under an assumed name, something that would hauntingly be introduced into “Game of Death,” a film Lee began shooting before “Enter the Dragon.” Five years later, in 1978, “Enter the Dragon” director Robert Clouse finished “Game of Death” using two Bruce Lee stand-ins and quick close-up shots of stock footage of the real Bruce Lee from his earlier movies.
“Enter the Dragon” introduced a new generation of audiences to Asian Cinema, which has remained intact ever since. Without Lee and “Enter the Dragon,” I doubt Jackie Chan would have had the success he’s had over the years, although technically, Chan could have eventually been the chosen one (He even had a small role as a guard in “Enter the Dragon”). I doubt we would have had John Woo and his highly stylized directing style and chaotic “bullet ballet” action sequences, as well as Bong Joon-ho, Ang Lee, and Yeon Sang-ho. Of course, all of these incredible filmmakers and their films could have eventually impacted Western audiences; I just feel that Lee opened the door to their success, and it’s sad that he’s no longer around to celebrate their accomplishments by virtue of his own prosperity.
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