cult film freak: BRUCE LEE 'ENTER THE DRAGON' WITH JOHN SAXON & JIM KELLY

Written by James M. Tate / 12/01/2024 / No comments / adventure , ahna capri , bolo yeung , bruce lee , jim kelly , john saxon , karate , robert clouse , seventies , spy

BRUCE LEE 'ENTER THE DRAGON' WITH JOHN SAXON & JIM KELLY

12/01/2024 | No comment

Bruce Lee, Angela Mao, Kien Shih and Jim Kelly in ENTER THE DRAGON Year: 1973 Rates: ****1/2

By the time Bruce Lee, starring in his first and last American produced motion picture, squares off against island-ruling heavy Han in ENTER THE DRAGON, one important thing is crystal clear...

Nobody, from henchmen Bolo Young to Robert Wall, or co-stars John Saxon or Jim Kelly, could have taken him on and so, liken to a James Bond franchise villain, the seedy-smiling, slave-owning, harem-surrounded Kien Shih has a glove with knife-fingers to give him that needed/necessary edge...

Bruce Lee in ENTER THE DRAGON

Providing DRAGON a combination of spy infiltration adventure (with the best fight scenes involving 11th hour guards getting bruised from high-kicks to nunchucks) and what's referred to as a karate-tournament-flick, involving various matches befitting both the plot and characters...

Particularly centering on Lee, sent to the island to surreptitiously investigate a heroin trade by night while either randomly partaking in daytime matches or sizing-up competitors with his experienced cat-like prowess...

Jim Kelly in ENTER THE DRAGON

Like Jim Kelly's scene-stealing, token black champion Williams, a combination of idealistic ("ghettos are the same all over the world... they stink") and cocky womanizer, hooking up with as many island girls that are provided (inserting groovy b-movie blaxploitation into the kung-fu mainline) while Lee's solid co-star John Saxon, a handsome and confident yet severely unlucky gambler, has targeted blonde madame Ahna Capri...

Who underrated director Robert Clouse previously cast in his neo-noir DARKER THAN AMBER wherein an actual on-set fight (between Rod Taylor and William Smith) eventually handed him this game-changing opportunity... that he never got enough artistic credit for...

John Saxon in ENTER THE DRAGON with Bruce Lee

The espionage story (capped with an Orson Welles roomful-of-mirrors homage) is as important as the surrounding Bruce Lee-choreographed scrapes, either inside or outside the central tournament, with strategic plot-devices including flashbacks fleshing out the three leads...

Making ENTER THE DRAGON a violently-uncompromising yet mainstream-entertaining 100-minute action classic that holds back just-enough to provide Lee both a proper worldwide introduction and a tragically legendary swan song.