Film: Way Of The Dragon
Release date: 11th June 2001
Certificate: 18
Running time: 88 mins
Director: Bruce Lee
Starring: Bruce Lee, Nora Miao, Chuck Norris, Unicorn Chan, Bob Wall
Genre: Action/Comedy/Crime/Drama/Martial Arts/Thriller
Studio: Contender
Format: DVD
Country: Hong Kong
In late 1971, now comfortably the biggest star in Hong Kong, Bruce Lee consolidated his influence in the local film industry by forming his own production company, under which banner he would produce and direct his own starring vehicles. Way Of The Dragon was the first - and, sadly, only completed - film that he directed, in addition to writing the script, co-producing, acting and staging the fight sequences. It contains perhaps his most iconic on-screen battle, and unquestionably his most curious leading role.
Tang Lung (Lee), an uncomplicated young man from Hong Kong’s New Territories, is sent to Rome, Italy, to help some members of his extended family whose Chinese restaurant is the target of Mafia extortion.
Struggling to adapt to western customs, Tang bumbles around, proving generally useless in the dispute, alienating the very people he has come to support with his profound lack of sophistication and street-wisdom. However, when the local Mafia goons push him too far, the hitherto shy country boy proves that he is a fierce and deadly fighter. He drives the hoodlums away, earning the respect and adulation of his compatriots - and the attentions of the Mafia kingpin (Benn).
After failing to bribe him to leave Italy, the Mafia send in every thug they have in an effort to overpower Tang. And when that doesn’t work, they put in a call to their secret weapons - elite karate experts from Europe, Japan and America…
Way Of The Dragon is the true oddity of the sadly small body of work Bruce Lee produced in the early 1970s. In his previous two movies, Lee had maintained a consistent level of intensity as he burned up the screen and decimated his opponents. Here, for the most part, that intensity is replaced with a characterisation that is significantly lighter, almost to the point of self-deprecation. Lee has been labelled by some commentators as a narcissistic screen presence, a charge that is occasionally difficult to refute; but Way Of the Dragon showcases an actor and director willing to, if not outright send up, then at least have a little fun with his screen persona. Imagine Steve McQueen or Clint Eastwood so wilfully indulging in (literal) toilet humour with the apparent glee shown by Bruce here.
Frankly, the humour is of the kind that most audiences would label unsophisticated, even juvenile. A running gag of Tang Lung repeatedly asking for directions to the toilet after eating Italian soup quickly gets old, and the use of slapstick in the mid-film fight sequences are somewhat obvious, if guiltily enjoyable. Though humour was never going to be Lee’s forte, it helps to acknowledge that the physical and visual gags (Tang Lung’s misunderstanding of western toilet facilities, his unwitting solicitation of a prostitute) are rooted primarily in culture clash humour, the like of which would play extremely well for local Hong Kong audiences who would identify with Tang’s predicaments. Indeed, it is worth pointing out that, at this point in his career, the international playability of his Hong Kong movies was never at the forefront of Lee’s mind (in his DVD commentary track for the 2001 UK release of the film, Asian film expert Bey Logan notes Lee’s intention to remake Way Of The Dragon in English, set in San Francisco, sometime after Enter The Dragon - a fascinating proposition unfortunately never realised). As a film made for Asian audiences, the box-office receipts - Way Of The Dragon was Lee’s third straight movie to break all Hong Kong records - indicate that Lee’s directorial debut was an unqualified success.
And it is easy to see why the Hong Kong audiences so eagerly took to the film. Lee maintains the Lone Righteous Chinese vs. Mostly Foreign Villains set-up of his previous two movies, broadening the scope with the exotic European setting (though the exotic nature is undermined by Tang Lung in the wittiest moment of the film when, on a tour of historical landmarks, he dismisses one by suggesting it should be flattened for a commercial building). Exterior shots of genuine Italian streets and locations add true production value, making Way Of The Dragon feel like Lee’s “biggest” Hong Kong movie.
But while the relocation may feel brand new, the story is comfortably familiar, following a somewhat similar template to Lee’s action debut, The Big Boss, in that the protagonist’s flying into action is delayed (here, for thirty-two minutes), the difference being that the script draws humour from the audience’s anticipation of Tang Lung’s martial prowess, even while he is being derided by his Chinese associates. Once pushed too far, there is no stopping the hero as he meets all comers head on, and sends them packing - often with their ears ringing from a nunchuku strike. The script offers little in the way of surprise beyond the revelation that Tang Lung is actually an accomplished fighter, serving only to find scenarios for him to fight his way out of. Indeed, Lee’s screen persona in his Hong Kong movies is among the most proactive in all of cinema - the villains do not chase him, but rather experience the force of his wrath once crossed. As in The Big Boss and Fist Of Fury, Lee single-mindedly and methodically moves through the story on something of a quest towards the principal villain - the audience’s pleasure derived from watching him at work, and the vicarious thrills of the near superhuman talent on display.
However, this simple approach to the scriptwriting process does create something of a structural imbalance to the film. Whatever one’s comedic tastes, there’s no denying that the humour in the first act is arresting purely because it is so unexpected. However, after Tang Lung reveals himself to be the skilled fighter his compatriots need, the humour quickly falls away. In addition, the protagonist undergoes a (narratively un-charted and unexplained) transition from naïve and unsophisticated to the kind of straight-faced, semi-mythical hero that Bruce had perfected in The Big Boss (with just a touch of the Clint Eastwood, Man With No Name persona in the closing shot). It would have been interesting how the film would have played with Lee the filmmaker sustaining the light tone to forge perhaps the first true cinematic deconstruction of the Hong Kong martial arts genre.
As part of that wonderful genre, Way Of The Dragon remains exemplary for the same reasons as Bruce’s other Hong Kong work - Lee’s breathtaking physicality and innate skill as a fight choreographer. Here, with complete control of the production, Lee is working at the height of his powers, understanding how to tease the audience with action scenes aborted just before they start, until finally unleashing the power of Tang Lung in the briefest of skirmishes with four thugs. Each successive fight sequence gets a little bigger, a little more complex, until the climax, which is one of the high points of not only Lee’s career, but action cinema as a whole: Bruce Lee vs. Chuck Norris…in the Roman Colosseum! Since it was Norris’s first major film role (which he would parlay into a long, successful career as an action movie star in America), it is not quite a Fantasy Fight Scene to rival aficionados’ pondering of how, for example, a Bruce vs. Jackie Chan match-up might go, but even today there remains a consistent thrill to seeing these two genuine martial arts experts trade punches and kicks in such an appropriate setting (even if, for the most part, they are actually fighting on a soundstage in Hong Kong). As with the best of Lee’s work as an action director, what makes this fight truly unique is in how it examines, with brilliant simplicity, the director’s martial arts philosophy: after utilising traditional kung-fu techniques to no effect against a stronger, more powerful opponent, Tang Lung switches to a less inhibited, freer-form style to turn the tables and give himself a chance at victory - perhaps the neatest possible way for Lee to state his belief that a martial artist should always be adaptable. Even today, almost forty years later, Lee remains unmatched in his ability to weave martial teachings into a perfectly paced, enthralling duel with an intellectual and spiritual clarity.
As with the remainder of Lee’s Hong Kong works, Way Of The Dragon is - taken on its own merits, notwithstanding the charismatic leading man at its centre - little more than a straightforward exploitation movie, but one with flashes of a potentially unique filmmaker learning his craft. In his understanding of his audience, his (abortive) experimentation with the boundaries of his screen persona, and his knack for providing vicarious thrills, Bruce Lee shows all the intuition of a major Hong Kong director in the making. Unfortunately, he would never get to realise this potential, but his mark on the cinema he would leave behind in 1973 is clear and, while not having the surprise factor of The Big Boss or the sheer intensity of Fist Of Fury, the impact of Way Of The Dragon is undeniable. In fact, it is arguable that, without this film, world audiences may never have become fully acquainted with actors like Jackie Chan or Tony Jaa. Jaa’s persona in his international break-out Ong-Bak is an updated Bruce Lee - an asexual, mild-mannered and righteous hero who fights only when pushed over the edge. And before he joined the Hollywood A-list with Rush Hour, Chan made a smaller - but crucial - commercial splash in English-speaking territories with the international co-production Rumble In The Bronx, whose premise - Hong Kong native visits New York and is dragged into aiding his old uncle, whose Bronx supermarket is targeted by criminals - and narrative is effectively a beat-for-beat remake of Bruce’s directorial debut.
A tantalising glimpse at what might have been had Bruce Lee not passed away. Not the best film he made, but the combination of stunning action with the almost disarmingly light-hearted tone of the first act make Way Of The Dragon a fascinating film to revisit. JN
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