So I’ve probably mentioned this before, but anyone who knows me knows that I love to go DVD shopping. Snooping in and around places trying to find the best deals for rare or hard to find movies. Today, I struck gold at the local Salvation Army when I stumbled across the DVD Fists of Fury, which labelled itself as the first film of the legend himself Bruce Lee. Now, anybody reading this might be wondering why I put an AKA in the title. I did some reading and it turns out this was originally called The Big Boss in China, but this and and the title Bruce Lee’s second film Fist of Fury (which was renamed to The Chinese Connection) got mixed up when they were sent over to the states. Now the DVD I have referred to it as Fists of Fury, but probably because the one I found is an older DVD copy before all the proper titles of Bruce Lee’s films were restored to their correct names. But enough about that let’s talk about the movie.
Plot Summary - Cheng Chao-an (Bruce Lee) is a young man from China who moves to Thailand to stay with his cousins and try to start life out on his own. He gets a job working with his cousins at an Ice Factory. When a block of ice breaks during a shift, a bag of white powder falls out that two of his cousins find. When the boss asks to see them and they never come home, Cheng and the rest of his family set out to find out what happened to them.
Pros - First off, the Kung Fu scenes are awesome. Bruce Lee in this movie straight up just kills people, something I haven’t really seen too much of, although apparently the film was originally a lot more gory before the great Hong Kong film crackdown of 1972, but that’s a whole different thing I don’t know much about. The film is still paces really well despite the edits, and the plot is actually engaging and sometimes even aware of its own silliness, especially in one scene when what the characters were supposed to be doing gets forgotten after a long fight and they get reminded of it later on in. The music is fascinating too, if there was ever a thing of chinese psychedelic music this would be it.
Cons - The biggest comment would be on the editing, as there are a few noticeable jumps and scene skips, but it doesn’t affect the pacing at all. Also the version of the film I have is non HD so there’s some slight noticeable damage and the tops of scenes being cut off as some cut offs of characters. Also, and this is a minor complaint, but Bruce Lee doesn’t get his own fight scene until I think almost half way through the movie.
Final Score - 9/10
Overall, it’s a pretty solid Hong Kong Martial Arts film and a pretty good Bruce Lee movie. It was cool to see the movie that launched his career and I’m curious to see more now.
So, I have five other Retro movies sitting on my shelf, so we might be seeing a few more of these soon.
Until then, I’ll see you folks at the movies.
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