Enter the Dragon (1973)

Another supposed crime against cinema has been rectified, I finally sat down to watch Bruce Lee’s magnum opus. And it was madness. My knowledge of the Kung-Fu genre is disgracefully small; that Enter The Dragon reminded me so much of The Man With The Golden Gun (1974) speaks volumes to that. But that’s a feeling not entirely without merit; Moore’s Bond vehicle was released a mere year after Enter The Dragon and is peppered with Lee influences. It’s true that Enter The Dragon is no masterpiece-the first third or so is baffling in film making terms and kind of all over the place, but the rest of it is so entertaining, it more than makes up for any stumbling about in the first half hour or so. Lee is sent by British intelligence to an Island belonging to Han, a rich bastard who is involved in drug trafficking and the sex trade. He is to partake in a martial arts tournament that is held annually on the Island. I didn’t have a huge amount of time to dwell on the specifics before the action attempts to wipe your memory of the setup with admittedly great success. It plays like a spy thriller, the Bond comparisons are unavoidable but certainly not unwelcome, and the epic fight at the end of the film is fantastically choreographed. It was also impossible to watch the fight between Lee and Han at the films conclusion, in a hall of mirrors, without thinking of Scaramangas’ house of fun at the conclusion of The Man With The Golden Gun. But all of that works in Enter The Dragon’s favour; it’s a compliment that the Bond franchise followed up a year later with so many borrowed ideas, presumably to appeal to the Asian audience. 7.1/10