Enter The Dragon

Enter the Dragon (1973)

Runtime: 102 minutes

Directed by: Robert Clouse

Starring: Bruce Lee, John Saxon, Jim Kelly, Ahna Capri, Shih Kien

From: Warner Bros./Golden Harvest

I do not want to get into the whole rigmarole of why I have been all discombobulated since yesterday, why April hasn't had the best start so far, or why I did not have time to watch anything from Monday night until Wednesday night, or why I am doing this review differently from the norm... I'll just state that hopefully things will return to normal starting tomorrow. This is yet another film I hadn't seen in many, many years. Now to give some bullet points about it:

* The plot is simplistic yet it's still entertaining. Bruce Lee is given more than one reason to seek revenge against Han, the villain.

* John Saxon and Jim Kelly are the main supporting players, and like Lee they also have honor and pride. Sure, Kelly loves women and Saxon loves to gamble/bet, but they still have integrity, making it easy to like all three. BTW, Saxon has actual martial arts skills so it was cool he was able to use them here.

* With other actors I could complain about how they are mostly unstoppable and how only one person really inflicts any sort of damage about him, but considering Bruce's reputation, his rigorous training, diet and exercise & stories about him that may not be as apocryphal as they would be if they were attached to another person, I have no trouble believing the man or the character could easily defeat dozens of opponents.

* It was nice seeing some faces that became famous in later years, like Bolo Yeung, Sammo Hung, and for about five seconds, Jackie Chan.

* The Hong Kong scenery looked absolutely lovely, and also lovely was the score from Lalo Schifrin.

This is not the best martial arts film of all time by any means yet it's still fun as there were elements added to make it more accessible to the West, which worked so well that this was the main reason we had a Kung Fu craze in the mid 70's... not to mention, turn its star into the icon that he still is today.