Fist Of Fury

 Fist of Fury (Jing Wu Men) (1972)

Runtime: 106 minutes

Directed by: Wei Lo

Starring: Bruce Lee, Nora Miao, James Tien, Maria Yi, Fu Ching Chen

From: Golden Harvest

A grand old time even if you saw the dubbed version like I did. That print is for free on Prime while the original language cut costs a few bucks. It seemed like the right time to see an action-oriented film and why not some martial arts where I saw some dudes get wrecked? The dub did help make it less serious due to its quality and inherent cheesy nature; that said…

It was a plot which does sound simple at first but is actually more complex when you look beneath the surface. Bruce Lee is a student at a martial arts school and he returns just as his teacher-real life martial artist Huo Yuanjia-is being buried; he dies under mysterious circumstances. Some Japanese are real A-holes to those in the school (the context is important as the setting is 1910 Shanghai; it’d take too long to explain but Japan controlled the area at the time) but most at the school refuse to engage them. Well, Lee decides to be a loose cannon so later he kicks some ass and the consequences of those actions affected everyone else at that dojo.

Japanese imperialism was the crux of the plot although there’s also the ultimate price of revenge was a price you don’t want to pay. It does prove the adage of “If you want to gain revenge, first dig two graves.” Be that as it may, this was not a miserable slog. Chiefly, it was not only how heinous the bad guys were (especially the lead heel Riki Hashimoto, who had one hell of a mustache) but how much of a badass Lee was. As I’ve said before, him destroying so many guys is not so far-fetched; he’s someone who I’ve heard trained to an insane degree and did things like one finger pushups so sure, I can buy him kicking everyone else’s ass. Speaking of badasses, Jackie Chan is in this, as a stunt double.

Memorable/thrilling martial arts scenes, villains that are easy to hate, a legend as the lead, and a conclusion that thankfully was realistic in terms of the narrative helped made this more than just a random braindead martial arts picture.