ENTER THE DRAGON
REVIEW DATE: 3:6:0:0It's Kung Fu time, damnit!
At least it seems to be. If you go surfing through my critic brethren this week you'll find things like Black Belt Jones, Bruce Lee We Miss You and . . . okay, so you only got two other choices. Though, The Last Dragon is lurking around here, somewhere.
Then, of course, there's Enter the Dragon.
Oh, sure, I could review any number of crappy Lee-alikes but why steal Joe Bannerman's thunder? Besides, I watch Encore, and on Encore we except no substitutes! No, wait, that's someone else's tag line. On Encore we except lots of substitutes we just pretend they don't exist. You understand.
Okay, on with it. Bruce Lee plays Bruce Lee (what a surprise), star Kung Fuer. Upon seeing him do his thang at temple a suit (Peter Archer) confronts Lee with an offer. Suitman belongs to an unnamed may-or-may-not-be secret agency. For awhile now the agency has been watching a dude named Han (Kien Shih). They know he's doing something illegal, but they can't pin him with it. Lucka-Lee Han holds a Kung Fu competition every year on his sacluded island. The Agency plans for Lee to crash this little party from the inside.
This got me wondering: Okay so Suitman says that The Agency "isn't an enforcement agency." OK. So why not hand off the case to someone who is? Yeah, I know: because no other agency has Bruce Lee. Fine, whatever lets Bruce kick-ass.
Leaving for Han's Skull Island, Lee meats and greets our other characters. There's Roper (John Saxon), the movie's WASP. He's a gambling junky with some heavy debts to pay. He does it all for the $ and, in his early scenes, he's quite the bastard.
Then we have Williams (Jim "Black Belt Jones" Kelly). He kicks far to much ass to be a Token Black Dude, but his trademark afro inspired much laughter from the group of friends still brave enough to watch this movie with me (most of my friends are smart enough to run screaming whenever I plug something into the VCR, God bless those who aren't).
Once we reach the shore, the fun begins. "Fun", in this case, being an almost continuous series of Kung Fu fights. The three leads chainsaw their way through the competition and Lee snoops around the island while the others are getting' it on with some of Han's women. I ask you, who's the smarter?
Well, it turns out that Han is indeed evil. The competition is just a recruitment system, searching out new talent to join Han's evil organization. Being the heroes, our heroes scoff at his offers and then the ass whopin' really begins.
It's no secret that most Kung Fu movies are, basically, an excuse to watch a bunch of guys beat the crap out of each other. Or, in Bruce Lee's case, watch one guy beat the crap out off everyone on screen. I swear, Bruce is a fighting machine, but I've discovered his secret: Bruce can only perform at his peak when he is shirtless. He can't transform into Super-Bruce unless he first rips his shirt off. I can almost imagine him shouting something like "Bruce Lee: Maximize!" and shredding his shirt, Hulk Hogan style.
This is the stuff I think about in my spare time. Be afraid!
How the hell am I suppose to review this? Hmm . . . one word at a time, I guess. Okay, it's obvious writer Michael Allin wanted to get to the Kung Fu as fast as possible, leaving the usual trivialities of movie making (character development and such) by the wayside. Lee is a Shaolin. Beyond that, we don't get squat on him. Roper has gambling problems and Williams was getting mistreated by Da Man. Boy, now that's in depth.
Not that we care.
It's equally obvious that the acting was hard-Lee top priority either. But at least everyone can read their lines with some degree of sincerity. Han, though . . . man, that boy flipped the melodrama switch to "high". As Black Belt says, "Man, you come right out of a comic book." Amen, Belt.
The plot, or what we see of it, is pretty damn thin. Again, it takes the shortest distance between to action scenes at all times.
Not that we care. After all, it's the Kung Fu, stupid.
And what Kung Fu it is. Well directed by Robert Clouse and well edited by a bunch of other people whom I'm sure have names too, we get only lean mean Kung Fu scenes. Straight to the point. And we have Lee's trademark, otherworldly battle cries to see us through. But does anyone else think that, by screaming at the top of his lungs while fighting off at least 20 guys, Lee might suffer oxygen depravation? Oh, who am I kidding, no one thinks this hard about a Kung Fu movie.
The Foley sounds are exaggerated. The actors are pretty wooden. But the directing is great and the fights . . . oh the fights . . . the fights are pure Bruce Lee.
Gs
MOCK O METER
