I Watch Films: The Way Of The Dragon

 

The Way Of The Dragon

A crime boss wants to take over a Chinese Restaurant in Rome. The owner asks her uncle in Hong Kong for help. He sends Tang Lung (Bruce Lee). He acts like a country bumpkin (it’s possible he doesn’t speak the language from how he gestures at the menu in a restaurant, though everyone is dubbed into English). Arriving there the staff have taken up karate though one of them talks up “Chinese boxing” (kung fu).

The gangster’s lackies arrive, but Tang has gone to the toilet in what’s apparently the payoff for his constantly going to the toilet joke (no one else goes to the toilet after this). They scare off the customers and everyone thinks Tang is useless. The gang turn up again later and defeat the staff in a fight, then Tang appears and beats them single handedly.

From here things escalate. The gangsters come back at Chinese New Year and hold the staff at gun point, give Tang a one way ticket to Hong Kong; he uses nunchucks to defeat them. A traitor amongst them lures the staff to an isolated place where the boss has hired two martial arts experts, including one Colt (Chuck Norris). Following a trail from the isolated place Tang finds himself in the Colosseum, in the most egregious of the film’s geographical lapses, for an extended fight sequence and a bloody ending. The film’s a comedy!

It's a comedy but frankly the funny scenes aren’t funny. Bruce Lee isn’t a good comedian (he’s a much better straight man when wacky and unlikely things happen to him and he reacts calmly until he bursts into frantic action). The fight scenes are much better, the epic battle with Chuck Norris one of the finest kung fu action scenes, and perhaps one of the greatest duels in films.

Watch This: Some genuinely excellent kung fu stunts
Don’t Watch This: A paper thin plot and the first half dominated by unfunny comic setpieces