skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Film: The Big Boss
Release date: 23rd October 2006
Certificate: 18
Running time: 96 mins
Director: Lo Wei
Starring: Bruce Lee, James Tien, Maria Yi, Han Ying-chieh, Nora Miao
Genre: Action/Crime/Drama/Martial Arts/Thriller
Studio: Contender
Format: DVD
Country: Hong Kong
In 1971, Bruce Lee returned to his native Hong Kong after unsuccessfully trying to launch himself in Hollywood. Capitalising on the popularity of his US television series The Green Hornet, Lee took the lead role in this low-budget exploitation flick. How was anyone to predict that he was about to provide a watershed moment in Hong Kong film history?
After getting in trouble in Hong Kong, Cheng Chao-an (Lee) travels to Pak Chong, Thailand, where his mother hopes he will be able to stay out of street violence. Wearing a locket to remind himself of the promise he made to her that he would never fight again, Cheng meets up with Hsu (Tien), leader of a small group of Chinese expats working in Thailand. Here, he finds camaraderie, and maybe even romance in the form of Chiao-mei (Yi).
Cheng gets a job with Hsu and the others, working in an ice factory, where the Chinese workers are bullied by the Thai foremen, who are in the employ of the mysterious ‘Boss’ (Han). When two of their group discover that the factory is really a front for a heroin smuggling operation, they are offered a place in the crime gang. When they refuse, they are brutally murdered, and pronounced missing.
But when Hsu visits the boss to get some answers, and he does not return, the Chinese expats finally begin to suspect that something sinister and deadly is going on at their workplace. How long will Cheng be able to keep his promise to his mother?
There is something innately thrilling about watching a movie star come into their own before your very eyes, and with Bruce Lee, the experience is intensified by the knowledge that The Big Boss was the Little Dragon’s very first leading role as an adult. Unlike Jackie Chan, who would succeed him as Hong Kong’s number one box office performer in the second half of the 1970s, Lee had no trial and error period where he perfected a cinematic persona, no artistic or commercial misfires to signpost his pathway to Legend-status. Like his launching into action at this film’s midway point, he exploded onto the Hong Kong cinema circuit a fully-formed icon - he just needed a film in which to appear. Though he would add and subtract elements in his subsequent movies, the core of the Lee persona is already in place in The Big Boss - here, Lee plays an initially mild-mannered young man looking to avoid confrontation until the moment he is left with no other choice (see also, Way Of The Dragon and Enter The Dragon); he fights on behalf of his persecuted countryman, in the name of family and revenge (see, Fist Of Fury and Way Of The Dragon); his skill-level is - perhaps inexplicably - preternatural (see, every subsequent Bruce Lee movie). A passionate, driven character off the cinema screen, there is no doubt that Lee was in complete control of how he appeared on it.
It is not just his star persona that makes The Big Boss a significant, landmark work in Hong Kong cinema. The fight choreography was also something the like of which had never been seen previously. Today, Bruce Lee’s fight scenes may seem lacking in comparison to the overly dexterous and imaginative work by such later revolutionaries as Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan, Yuen Woo-ping and Lau Gar Leung, among others, who would take Hong Kong cinema to new heights in the years after Lee’s untimely passing in 1973. But The Big Boss offers something of a history lesson, clarifying the giant leap forward Lee made with his method of fight staging, which thrillingly merges a more practical form of combat with a shooting style that more than tips its hat to Sergio Leone and the Spaghetti Western genre, which were hugely popular in the US in the mid-to-late 1960s, when Lee would have been living and working in Hollywood. If one compares the movement of the leading man to supporting player James Tien and the others around him (all coordinated by credited fight choreographer Han Ying-chieh), one can see that Bruce Lee was not simply making a splash on the Hong Kong box-office - he was grabbing an entire cinema by the scruff of the neck and taking it forward with him. Elements of Lee’s work has dated since their early 1970s release dates - but the combat sequences still stand up as visceral slices of cinematic brilliance.
Given how beautifully destined all of this seems, an analysis of the film’s one true narrative masterstroke - the delaying Cheng Chao-an’s exploding-into-action for a tantalising forty-one minutes - would suggest that the filmmakers had every intention of The Big Boss being the signature, watershed movie that it became. After forty-one minutes of stylised kung-fu, filmed in the familiar static camera angles of an era on which Bruce Lee was about to close the book, the moment that a foolish Thai goon rips off Cheng’s treasured locket, bringing forth the furious vengeance of the previously mild-mannered expat, the film seems to take on an almost mythic significance.
Sadly, the reality is that the production of The Big Boss was a greatly troubled one, rendering any grander reading of the film’s intentions as something of a happy accident. In his biography of Bruce Lee, writer Bruce Thomas states that the original director Wu Chai-wsaing was fired in the early stages of production, to be replaced by Lo Wei (who would go on to helm Lee’s next, and best, film Fist Of Fury), and that production began with not a script, but a list of ideas scribbled on paper. Furthermore, Lee suffered from chronic back trouble, and lost weight from bouts of food poisoning. Thomas also claims that supporting actor James Tien was the original star of the movie until the producers saw that they had a more charismatic leading man in the cast. This latter point, knowing Lee’s charisma, personality - as well as the evident control he exerted over the production - is debateable; and it is worth noting that in his audio commentary on the original 2000 Hong Kong Legends DVD release, Asian cinema expert Bey Logan claims Tien was cast in a supporting role as a back-up in the (unlikely) event that Lee proved unable to carry the picture himself.
And what of the picture as a cinematic work? With every Bruce Lee vehicle, the reviewer must divorce themselves from appreciation of the leading man’s charisma and physical brilliance to view objectively the script and production. Of all his completed works as an adult actor, it is The Big Boss that perhaps falls the shortest when taken on its own merits. Though much of the production signified advancement and updating of Hong Kong cinema, it abides by the then-tradition of script-structure, whereby the plot serves only to set up the fight sequences, and the most done to ensure that the audience is on the hero’s side is to make the villains foreign (although the Thais of The Big Boss perhaps get off lightly compared to the portrayals of Japanese in Fist Of Fury, and Europeans in Way Of The Dragon). The characters are generally archetypes, which frustratingly limits the narrative options in the second half. As Cheng’s investigation into the disappearances of his Chinese friends places him in deadly corners that he has to fight his way out of, he emerges from one particularly desperate battle near-traumatised at the experience of killing an opponent with his own fist. Cheng’s trauma lasts but a minute before any of the psychological effects are swiftly forgotten as the film pushes into its finale with the discovery of a brutal massacre, but not before the viewer is left wondering why Cheng was left traumatised by that particular, empty handed, killing and not the variety of stabbings he inflicted earlier in the same fight. Certainly, these types of questions will always arise when, as noted, a production begins without a finished script, and this rushed, slam-bang approach is reflected in both the generally static cinematography and rickety sets - The Big Boss lacking some of the production value that Lee would insist upon later in his career.
That said, director Lo Wei - as he did in Fist Of Fury - shows a certain flair for the macabre. Scenes of unfortunate Chinese workers being first murdered and then placed into large blocks of ice are genuinely eerie, and really stand out among the otherwise uninspired level of craft on show in terms of script and direction.
But, the truth is, nobody revisits Bruce Lee’s movies for the script, direction or acting. The movies’ re-watch value is always high, because the pleasure of seeing Bruce Lee on screen remains a thrilling example of a man punching and kicking at the walls of a movie screen, threatening to burst free at any moment. Even today, nearly forty years after The Big Boss’s premiere, the walls of cinema can only just about contain the ferocious power of the Little Dragon.
Bruce Lee elevates an otherwise rote and overly-familiar screen story to a level above ‘guilty pleasure’. For its historical and cultural significance, The Big Boss is an essential work - a genuine time-capsule, capturing the moment Hong Kong cinema changed forever. JN
Film: Fist Of Fury
Release date: 23rd January 2006
Certificate: 18
Running time: 102 mins
Director: Lo Wei
Starring: Bruce Lee, Nora Miao, James Tien, Maria Yi, Robert Baker
Genre: Action/Drama/Martial Arts/Romance
Studio: Contender
Format: DVD
Country: Hong Kong
Unquestionably the defining role of Bruce Lee’s short career as a leading man, and the beginning of a sub-genre within Hong Kong cinema, how does Fist Of Fury stand up thirty-eight years later?
Returning from his studies to his kung-fu school in occupied Shanghai, Chen Zhen (Lee) discovers that his master, Huo Yuan-jia, has died. Not believing that his unbeatable master could succumb to either a challenge or illness, the grief-stricken and increasingly deranged Chen Zhen seeks out the truth.
After the local Japanese martial artists show up at Huo’s funeral to humiliate the native Chinese, Chen seeks revenge by challenging the whole Japanese dojo to a duel, from which he emerges victorious. But when the Japanese trash his school in revenge, Chen is convinced that he must leave Shanghai to spare his already downtrodden compatriots any more grief from their oppressors.
But when he discovers that his master was poisoned on the orders of the Japanese, Chen goes on a vengeful rampage, in the process becoming a wanted serial killer. Will the police, headed up by a conflicted Chinese detective (Lo), find him before Chen can find the real killers and avenge his master’s death?
Having already laid the groundwork for his on-screen persona in his 1971 debut, The Big Boss, Bruce Lee made himself a true Hong Kong icon with Fist Of Fury. Everything that is today considered synonymous with ‘The Little Dragon’ began in this film - the cat-like battle cries, fight scenes infused with practical martial arts application and philosophy, and the nunchuku as his signature weapon. And Lee was never a more dynamic or potent force than he was in the role of Chen Zhen.
This is not to suggest that Lee is in his comfort zone in this film. Like with his relentless pursuit of off-screen martial arts excellence, a closer examination of his work reveals that Lee was constantly trying new things as an actor. His Chen Zhen is a world apart from his The Big Boss role, Cheng Chao-an. Where Cheng was more of an everyman, reluctant hero, mired deeper and deeper in a violent situation, Chen Zhen is an emotionally unhinged protagonist - the closest Lee came to playing an anti-hero. Unlike his roles either side of Fist Of Fury - in The Big Boss and Way Of The Dragon - Lee shows neither a reluctance to engage in combat, nor any kind of quiet indomitable spirit. Chen Zhen begins the film unhinged, unable to deal with his master’s death, and sees only one way to process his emotions - violence. In previous and subsequent films, Lee’s hero would kill only when he had no other option; in Fist Of Fury, he not only kills, but strings up his victims - publicly humiliating them for their treachery. Interestingly, his antics pre-date the classic ‘slasher movie’ template that would become a popular American horror genre by a good six years.
While Lee’s acting style - very expressive, not very subtle - was never going to win him awards, there’s no denying that his intense, pseudo-crazed turn in Fist Of Fury shows a fascinating lack of vanity that directly clashes with the near-narcissistic control of his screen image evidenced elsewhere in the film. Strides are taken to ensure he always stands apart from the rest of the cast - at a memorial service for the deceased master; Lee is the only mourner to wear an all-white suit, everyone else in black or blue (a visual choice that, given the actor’s preternatural charisma, is almost completely redundant). As is par for the course in a Bruce Lee vehicle, when it comes to fighting, he is practically untouchable - never in real danger, even when outnumbered twenty-to-one.
Lee’s control extends to the rest of the movie. Legend has it that Lo Wei was a particularly ‘hands-off’ director, preferring to listen to the horse-racing on the radio than oversee the production. Though Lo has a myriad of credits - director, writer, even production designer - there is no escaping the fact that the leading man is all over this production. One need only compare the fights that feature Lee (choreographed by the man himself) and the fights that don’t (choreographed by veteran Han Ying-chieh - who also played the eponymous villain in The Big Boss, as well as a treacherous Chinese servant in this film). The protagonist fights with a fluid, practical style, freely mixing traditional techniques with street-fighting tactics, while those around him move in the overly-stylised, unrealistic sequences of the Shaw Brothers era. It’s no surprise at all that, following this film, Lee went on to write, direct, and co-produce his next vehicle, Way Of The Dragon.
Among the elements of his on-screen persona that is consistent with Lee’s other two completed Hong Kong pictures is his keen awareness of Hong Kong/Chinese national identity. In each of these three films, Lee is a lone Chinese hero, standing up to non-Chinese oppressors (corrupt Thai drug barons in The Big Boss, the Italian mafia in Way Of The Dragon, and Japanese imperialists in Fist Of Fury). In 1972, with occupation and oppression, rebellion and revolution still fresh in their memory, it would seem that Chinese viewers may have had a willingness to live vicariously through their new No. 1 star. Indeed, Hong Kong cinematic lore tells the story of Fist Of Fury’s premiere audience greeting the moment that Chen Zhen literally makes the Japanese villains eat their racist words and proclaim that the Chinese are not the “sick men of Asia” by rising to their feet and cheering wildly.
Fist Of Fury is also a landmark film for the ‘next generation’ talent involved in various roles. Bruce himself would not live long enough to see the true Golden Age of Hong Kong martial arts movies (considered by many fans to be the years 1978-1982), but his legacy is never plainer than in the credits for this film. A teenage Jackie Chan is visible as an extra early on, and also doubles for the Japanese villain, Susuki, in the film’s climactic stunt (in his autobiography, Chan described the experience of being kicked by Bruce Lee as like being hit by a car). After Bruce’s passing, Jackie would be signed up by this film’s director, Lo Wei, as his leading man in a succession of mostly forgettable period actioners, among them New Fist Of Fury - a direct sequel to this film, in which Nora Miao and Lo Wei reprise their roles. Though none of the films he made for Lo would make him a star, it was his frustration with being saddled with Bruce Lee imitation vehicles that would eventually inspire the young Jackie Chan to develop his own equally unique on-screen persona, a direct antithesis of Bruce, in his 1978 breakout hits - Snake In The Eagle’s Shadow and Drunken Master.
Also among the crew was the up-and-coming stuntman/coordinator and actor Sammo Hung, working behind the scenes on the action sequences. Hung would not only go on to fight Lee on-screen in the opening scene of Lee’s Hollywood breakout Enter The Dragon, but would eventually replace Lee as studio Golden Harvest’s ‘go-to guy’, both as an actor and director. When, several years after Bruce’s death, the studio wanted to salvage his incomplete footage for Game Of Death, it was to Hung that they turned to construct new fight scenes for a brand new movie. Beyond this, Hung would also become the lynchpin of the most talented and prolific generation of Hong Kong screen fighters, many of whom are visible in Fist Of Fury: Yuen Wah (seen on-screen as the obnoxious Japanese who suggest Chen pretend to be his dog; the Kung-fu Hustle star was also Lee’s acrobatic double on this film), Lam Ching-ying (the future Mr Vampire, following up a bit-part in The Big Boss with a walk-on as a disposable Japanese fighter), Corey Yuen Kwai (who would go onto a distinguished career as a director and fight choreographer, also among the Japanese henchmen). Within a decade, Hung would be directing his old Peking Opera School classmate Jackie Chan in what many aficionados consider to be his very best work (Wheels On Meals, Dragons Forever, among others). Without Bruce Lee’s influence, his choreographic breakthroughs with more practical, realistic fight sequences than had been seen previously, it is questionable whether these youngsters would have had the platform to take Hong Kong cinema to the still-unmatched heights that they did during the aforementioned Golden Age.
But what of the film on its own merits? Put bluntly, Fist Of Fury is an overly straightforward kung-fu actioner that would perhaps have disappeared from memory had any other actor filled the leading role. Lo Wei’s directorial style is very basic and functional, the production obviously moving as quickly as possible (note the blocking of group-exposition scenes, the lined-up cast looking like bit-part players in a traditional stage play). The script is efficient in that it sets up the fight scenes adequately enough, but with little doubt over the eventual success of Chen Zhen’s violent mission, it lacks both tension and surprise. Where the film always remains interesting, even on repeat viewings, is the aforementioned ‘slasher movie’ styling, and the anti-heroics of Bruce Lee’s character. Sadly, he would not live long enough to play another anti-heroic martial artist in a bigger-budget film.
But despite all the quibbles one might have with it on a technical level, there is simply no denying the legacy of the film. Sequels - official and otherwise - abounded in the years after Bruce’s death. In addition to the Lo Wei-directed continuation of the story starring Jackie Chan, Fist Of Fury II was released starring the most prominent ‘Bruceploitation’ imitator, Bruce Li. Subsequent generations of actors have tried their hand at playing Chen Zhen - most notably Jet Li in 1994’s Fist Of Legend, and Donnie Yen in a mid-1990s TV adaptation. Yen’s series spawned a 2010 cinematic sequel, Legend Of The Fist: The Return Of Chen Zhen. As well as the sequels, remakes and re-imaginings, the life and times of the real Huo Yuan-jia was essayed (again by Jet Li) in 2004’s Fearless. And beyond the direct references and tributes, the influence of Fist Of Fury is plainly evident in Wilson Yip’s fictionalised biopic of Bruce’s own Wing Chun master, Ip Man, when the protagonist (Donnie Yen) single-handedly takes down ten Japanese black belts in a sequence highly reminiscent of Bruce’s opening twenty-to-one showdown. Given that the action is choreographed by Fist Of Fury alum Sammo Hung (whose own work, as well as his uncanny ability to mimic him - see Enter The Fat Dragon - shows a great deference to Bruce Lee), one has to assume the homage is deliberate.
Bruce Lee may have died in 1973, but his spirit lives on in the cinema he helped transform. And in no other film does that spirit punch and kick with more ferocity than in Fist Of Fury.
On its own merits, Fist Of Fury is perhaps little more than a straightforward martial arts action flick, with flashes of dark thriller element not common to Hong Kong films of this era. When its leading man is on-screen, however, Fist Of Fury delivers a 5-star experience, and for the bringing together of so many future stars, not to mention a stylistic influence that has endured for 38 years with no sign of abating, it is unquestionably a landmark Hong Kong film. Absolutely essential. JN
