Enter the Dragon (HD DVD)

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Before there were "Crouching Tigers" and "Flying Daggers" and Jet Li's, there was "Enter the Dragon" and Bruce Lee. I'm not sure if the movie was originally meant to be as tongue-in-cheek as it comes off today, but it's certainly as much fun as ever.

"Enter the Dragon" is notable for several reasons. For starters, this 1973 release was martial-artist superstar Bruce Lee's first big-scale, Hollywood-financed venture and his last completed film before his untimely death. Second, it was Lee's most financially successful film. Third, it is the movie most often credited with popularizing the kung-fu cinema craze; that is to say, without Lee we might not have had Jackie Chan, Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Yun-Fat Chow, Jet Li, and the rest. But most important, it's a darned good action yarn in the James Bond mold.

In other words, "Enter the Dragon" is not just a historical curiosity but a highly watchable and enjoyable commodity. It may not have the glamorous special effects of today's CGI epics, but Lee and his co-stars, John Saxon and Jim Kelly, more than make up for it in personal charisma (lots of it) and action sequences of balletic, if undeniably turbulent, grace.

Warner Bros. have issued "Enter the Dragon" at least five times now on DVD, first in a regular edition, then in a single-disc Twenty-fifth Anniversary Special Edition, then in a Twenty-fifth Anniversary Commemorative Edition, then in a two-disc Special Edition, and now on an HD DVD. Each time, things get better, but the buyer must have to wonder where it will all end. This latest HD edition obviously offers improved picture and sound, plus all of the bonus features found on the last SD edition. If that seems intriguing and you're a serious Bruce Lee fan, the set may of value to you.

The plot is pretty flimsy, but the movie is not about plot or story. Lee, whose name in the film really is Lee, is asked to infiltrate a martial-arts tournament on the island fortress of an evildoer named Han (Shih Kien), a fellow at the head of a drug and slavery empire. Han is a renegade Shaolin monk who has disgraced his and Lee's temple with his heinous behaviour and whose men forced the suicide of Lee's sister, so Lee has a double motive for bringing him to justice. With the help of fellow tournament competitors Roper (John Saxon) and Williams (Jim Kelly, the 1971 international middleweight karate champion, looking like he stepped straight out of TV's "Mod Squad" with his period "fro"), Lee beats up an army of bad guys and defeats the evil Han.

The acting is rather stiff, but that, too, is part of the movie's charm. Watch the camera move in on Lee any number of times, while he strikes a pose, stares and glares. Although it's been parodied a hundred times in other movies, it doesn't make watching Lee do it any the less impressive.

Anyway, there isn't much need for great acting when the action is so spectacular. I am not a big fan of kung-fu movies in general, but the fight sequences in this one are as compelling to watch as modern dance. The clothing and hairstyles date the picture, to be sure, but that's of little concern. Like the James Bond series, it's the riveting action and the beautiful settings (most of them shot on location in Hong Kong) that matter. You can find more reflections of the Bond series in the music of Lalo Schifrin and in the villain's artificial, Dr. No-like hand and his Blofeld white cat; and you'll see literal reflections of Orson Welles's "The Lady from Shanghai" in the climactic mirror scene.

Additionally, among the cast are Bob Wall as Han's dastardly bodyguard, Oharra; Yang Sze as the monster martial artist, Bolo; Ahna Capri as Han's chief mistress, Tania; and Betty Chung as the beautiful secret agent, Mei Ling. Look, too, for brief, uncredited appearances by Sammo Hung Kam-Bo and Jackie Chan, and overdubbing of Han's dialogue by Keye Luke.

"Enter the Dragon" was also billed as "Long zheng hu dou," "The Deadly Three," and "Operation Dragon," take your pick. The movie received an R rating at the time of its release for some brief nudity and a good deal of punching and kicking. Today, I doubt it would rate more than a PG-13.

Trivia note: "Lee, high-strung and nervous about his most ambitious screen effort, endlessly rehearsed his kung fu routines. He damaged his hands as well as his ego during the fight with Bob Wall, when the latter came at him with broken bottles (real glass, not Hollywood breakaways); a miscalculated blow resulted in severe cuts that laid him off for a week. He was also accidentally bitten by a devenomed cobra in one scene. Lee's motions were so fast that some of his flying-kick sequences had to be filmed in slow motion so as not to look faked." --John Eastman, "Retakes," Ballantine Books, 1989.

Bruce Lee stood 5' 7 1/2" and weighed 135 pounds. Yet, over three decades later he remains filmdom's premier martial artist. Makes all of us little guys proud.