Fists of Fury
Review Date: 12:2:0:0
Bruce Lee: Maximize!
Sorry. Had to do
that. Been awhile. Awhile since we entered that magical, mystical realm, where fists sound
like gunshots and evil twirls its Fu Manchu mustachios. Except for this movie. There's no
mustachios here in Fists of Fury, but the punches do indeed sound like gunshots.
And every time Bruce displays his trademark chest, you know some poor bastard is about to
die.
Bruce is Cheng Chao-an, a man who has sworn an oath of . . . non-violence!? Bruce Lee? Non-violence? Bruce Lee? Non-violence? I don't know about you, but for me, something just doesn't click there. Something deep in my soul finds something very, very wrong with a non-violent Bruce Lee. I don't know if it's a pop culture thing, or whether I just like to see Bruce kick ass.
Yeah, it's that one. Bruce kick ass: Good. Bruce wax philosophy: not so good. Consequently, first half of Fists of Fury: not so good. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Bruce Lee is Cheng Chao-an, a man sworn an oath of . . . non-violence (ugh, I just feel dirty typing that, like I'm committing sacrilege or something). Bruce, after recovering from some traumatic loss or another (from the snatches of dialogue, we learn that Bruce promised his mother he'd stay away from fighting, and since his mother's never seen, or spoken of in the present tense, she must be dead, right?) goes to live with his Uncle (Chia Ching Tu). Uncle's already set Bruce up with a job at the local ice factory, right along side Bruce's cabal of cousins. Wow, chopping ice all day. Dream job, right?
Right. For half the movie Cheng and his covey of cousins slave away in their pain-in-the-ass job, taking shit from an abusive foreman (Chao Chen) and nursing their growing hatred of The Boss, Mi (Yin-Chieh Han). See? We have more in common with China then we think. The Boss, for one thing, lives up in a swanky condo and spends his day surrounded in prostitutes. I'd want to kick his ass, too.
To add another layer to the sandwich, The Boss is a cocaine smuggler, hiding it inside the giant blocks of ice his workers cut for shipping. One day, Bruce and his cuz' make the mistake of seeing one of these dirty snowballs. The Eldest Cousin (James Tien?) confronts the boss with it and (not surprisingly) disappears.
Bruce has the nerve to take offence at this and (by constantly annoying Mi and those workers loyal to him) sparks a riot in the ice factory. During said riot, one worker makes the mistake of ripping Bruce's shirt.
Oops.
This, as expected, unleashes the Dragon within, and some major asskicking begins. But as more cousins vanish, the amount of ass Bruce must kick expands tremendously. This leads where we all hope it must: into a big, Kung Fu megafight. Ah, now I feel clean and fresh again. Bruce Lee is distributing whoop-ass and all is as it should be.
Fists is an extremely Chinese flick, in more then the obvious way. Bruce begins things in thrall to a promise made to one of his elders. So, like the good son, he follows it to the letter . . . until something threatens his remaining (living) family, so he goes back on his word to protect those he loves. It doesn't work quite right, but, hey, that's the lesson, isn't it?
Beats the crap out of me. The Chinese get kinda confused with their moral message stuff. They've got 9000 years of tradition to chose from, but they seem to like sticking two conflicting messages in one movie. I mean, who's more important, here? Your dead relatives or your live ones?
Confusing morality plays aside, this is far from Lee's best. Much as I hate to admit it, you can't build and entire movie around asskicking. Acting must take place. Now, at times, Lee seems like an actual actor, real facial expressions and all. It's nice to see, I just don't see enough of it. Not enough to carry a movie, anyway. His scenes with his cousins are humorous but . . . I don't know who any of these people are.
Lee wrote the script, along with director Lo Wei. Both are many things, but not writers. Lee's cousins are in sore need of defining character traits. You know, besides birth order. I like to think our boy Bruce had more talent behind the typewriter then this or, at the very least, Lo Wei had enough for the two of them. Odds are Fists went through a hatchet job when National General Pictures got this thing stateside. The dubbing alone is proof of their incompetence
As for direction, let's just say that Lo Wei is no John Woo. He isn't even one of the Wachowski's, much less two. The fights, though nicely choreographed, come across pretty muddled thanks to the way they're shot. More's the pity. Whenever there isn't a fight on screen, Lo Wei makes sure to give Bruce plenty of loving close-ups.
Final answer: Fists of Fury ain't all that. At least, not to this western mind. I'm sure if I had the benefit of a Chinese upbringing (Chairman Mao forever, man! Yeah!), the movie would make perfect sense.
Maybe.
