Enter the Dragon

It's the 40th anniversary of Enter the Dragon, the most important Chinese martial arts film ever--the first to be made by a Hollywood studio. It was also the first Hollywood-made action film to feature an Asian-American star, and it was that star's last film.

I am not a big fan of martial arts films--I find too much kicking people in the head to be tedious, but I enjoyed this film. I even enjoyed it's obvious rip-off of the James Bond film Dr. No--the screenwriter, Michael Allin, even admitted it. It has a groovy '70s grindhouse feel to it, but does not look overly cheap, and Lee was a magnetic presence, and obviously did his own stunt work.

Lee plays a monk in a Shaolin temple. He is recruited by the British government to go undercover and attend a tournament held on the private island of Han (Shih Kien), a Shaolin monk gone rogue, to get the goods on him. Later Lee will discover that Han's men, including a giant white man called Oharra (Bob Wall) was responsible for his sister's death, so watch out.

Also in the tournament are a slick con man (John Saxon) and a black guy with a classic Afro, Jim Kelly. Meanwhile, Lee makes contact with another operative, and snoops around, discovering an opium operation.

The many fights here are well done (the choreography was by Lee) without looking ridiculous. Too many of these films are structured like video games, where the hero fights one guy at a time, but this was before video games, and Lee's speed and agility are shown off to realistic effect (this reminded me of the opening of Yojimbo, in which ninja Toshiro Mifune's impossible speed is placed in a physical reality). Lee isn't much of an actor when it comes to speaking, but given the historical aspects of his ethnicity, it's to be forgiven.

The parallels to Dr. No and other James Bond films are laughably obvious. Kien even looks like Dr. No, with a metal hand (he also pets a white cat like Blofeld). There are lots of beautiful babes on Han's island (Chinese actresses refused to play prostitutes, so they got the real thing from Hong Kong's bordellos), and of course, there are the ultimate showdowns.

Saxon, who was a staple of '70s B films, plays a good guy for once, and is amusingly droll.

Lee died only a few days before the film was released at age 32.