ENTER THE DRAGON

Film

I’m 11 years old. My grandfather sticks in a video tape and presses play. An image of a ripped man comes up on screen. He begins to fight guards in an underground prison. My eyes light up and widen in awe. The way he moves, with superhuman speed, skill, and technique is something I’ve never seen before. The man is Bruce Lee, the most famous martial arts actor who ever lived, and the film is arguably the most famous martial arts film ever made: Enter the Dragon. It lit a fire within me that burns to this day. Many of my peers had the same experience as the introduction to a world of magnificent physical theatre: martial arts cinema.

Fifty years ago Enter the Dragon was released. Despite the rich tradition and popularity of martial arts pictures in Asia at the time, it had yet to catch on in the West. That is exactly what Enter the Dragon achieved, with 100 minutes of 70s cool that depicted fight scenes as they had never been seen before. The kung fu boom was born, and people scrambled to learn the ways of Eastern combat. What is the film without its star, the beyond legendary Bruce Lee?

By all accounts, Lee had a charisma that was electric. Marry that with a preternatural gift for combat, and you have someone ready made for super stardom. Even to this day when I watch Enter the Dragon, Lee’s special energy radiates from the screen. You can’t take your eyes off him, whether he’s delivering dialogue in an ice cool manner, or doing what he does best: kicking ass in a way that arguably nobody has been able to emulate. His life was cut short at 32, weeks away from the international release of Enter the Dragon.

In the film Lee plays a Shaolin Monk who infiltrates the secret island of villain Han, a renegade monk turned criminal overlord. Under the guise of attending his martial arts tournament, Lee takes a dangerous path, as he has personal reasons to take Han down.

The film is a pure 70s thrill ride, and yes, it is dated. The approach to female characters, either as plot devices or sexual objects, is highly questionable. It’s a time capsule to a period in film-making when blockbusters could be art and everything in between. The repercussions of the phenomenon the movie created are still being felt. Michelle Yeoh recently won a Golden Globe, and may be the first Asian actor to win an Oscar for Best Actor, for Everything Everywhere All at Once. That film’s cherry on the cake is its hyper-stylised martial arts action. As his wife Linda Lee said at Bruce Lee’s funeral, ‘the spirit lives on’. I love to think that Lee’s spirit is looking down and smiling at the legacy his short life left. Watching Enter the Dragon, you can see that special spirit in action.

Enter the Dragon is available to watch on most streaming platforms

Martin Sandison