Why Enter The Dragon is Bruce Lee's worst movie

Enter The Dragon is the movie in which Bruce Lee plays James Bond with Kungfu instead of gadgets!! Dear Bruce, if you're reading this from up there somewhere, please forgive me because you're not gonna like it!

It begins with a bunch of Shaolin monks sitting around in multi colored robes watching Bruce Lee fight Sammo Hung. I don't know why Shaolin monks were dressed in primary colors instead of the regular yellow-orange clothings, but what really made my imagination go wild was that Bruce Lee and Sammo Hung were dressed in some expensive looking  black leather lingerie and gloves! It's not everyday that you get to see Sammo Hung doing backflips dressed in black leather undies though, so I guess the novelty was kinda worth it.

Now Bruce has grandmaster level Kungfu skills and he offers lessons himself. I just wasn't sure just what the hell was he teaching the kid though when Bruce started talking about fingers pointing moons and heavenly glories or something. But the kid seemed to figure it all out right away, I guess it must've been some Shaolin Kungfu thing...

It sounded all Taoish and sh-t so it's all good, but where I think the "confusing-Taoish-sounding-Kungfu-training" trick failed was with Bruce Lee's feedback to the kid's sparring techniques - "What was that? An exhibition? We need emotional content." - This seems to be a popular trend in movies where someone says something that reflects scriptwriter's thinking. This is useful as it gives us an insight into what the scriptwriter wants us to see, it explains the viewers what's gonna happen. Here though, it probably reflects Bruce's idea of an effective movie or an effective action sequence, or may be Bruce read the script and sent it with a note saying "What is this? An exhibition? We need emotional content", but it has nothing to do with the scene in question in a meaningful way.

The "emotional content" thing makes sense though, because ultimately, it's an Asian martial arts flick and we want the viewers to root for the characters, or else you end up with one of those "My school better than your school" type of plots where the viewers end up skipping to the fights and watch four classic Kungfu movies in fifteen minutes. Bruce Lee was obviously scared of that happening and he decided to introduce, not one not two, but three backstories explaining why he needs to leave his cozy Shaolin temple, dress up in expensive suits and play James Bond fight ex-Shaolin crimelords in some far away island fortress.

Still, the movie somehow didn't make an attempt to explain how a Shaolin monk is able to speak flawless english, knows about drug overdoses and behaves more like a geek from modern Chinatown in NYC rather than a badass monk training for years in Shaolin temple. May be Shaolin masters finally upgraded their curriculum or something, I'm not sure. But wouldn't it be significantly better if Bruce was portrayed as a somewhat ignorant Shaolin monk (with some basic English skills) going out for a secret mission in an unfamiliar environment & culture? His other more successful movies have benefited significantly with this portrayal. Even big hits like big boss had a similar theme going on. Wouldn't it have been more fun to see how Bruce reacts to situations he is not familiar with, interacts with people from new cultures, improvises his Shaolin techniques to fight/win in radically new circumstances? May be, may be not, we'll never know. What I do know is that then it'd have added that "emotional content" in a more realistic way while effectively moving the focus away from "let's see a few guys fight" thing. 

The movie does add some extra flavor to the "whole asian guys doing Kungfu" thing by adding two Americans to the mix, played by John Saxon and Jim Kelly. And these guys manage to show the true American entrepreneur spirit by betting on their own fixed fights. And it's actually a very brave thing to fake fights in a Mortal Kombat style fight-to-death martial arts tournament on a secluded island owned by some Asian crime overlord right under the noses of hundreds of Kungfu masters! It's even more brave to be completely honest about faking those fights - John Saxon gets easily beat up multiple times, then he nods his head to Jim Kelly and immediately wins the next bout with a single decisive blow. I mean, is everyone else blind? Even more so the guy with thick eyeglasses who is actually losing money 3-1 here! May be he missed his regular optometrist visit or something, I'm not sure.

Robert/Bob Wall plays a major bada-s who can break bricks and stuff with his Kungfu and Bruce Lee is particularly pis-ed at him because he apparently messed with Bruce's sister once.  But poor Bob probably doesn't even know that girl was Bruce's sister and Bruce is so angry at him over something! I felt that was a little unfair to him.

In yet another case of scriptwriter converting his own personal thoughts into movie dialogues, Jim Kelly says something like "u come right out of the comic book".....this is supposed to be a joke on Kien Shih (the crimelord who arranged this whole mess) but as it turns out, Jim Kelly was just making fun of both himself and the script of the movie when he said that. I mean what was the Jim Kelly's plan? Beat 4-5 guys and then fly out of the island? This is very inconsistent as he is initially shown to be pretty damn smart, betting on fights and what not. Probably he used all the smartness on betting, or something. That particular scene does show just how dangerous Kien Shih really is when he easily takes down Jim Kelly despite his handicap (apparently he is an amputee and has to use claw like appendages instead).

But you know, who cares about Jim Kelly, I mean, Bruce Lee is supposed to be the "dragon" in Enter the Dragon, right? Bruce Lee is supposed to be the guy from Shaolin who used his ninja skills and an Asian software developer's brain to win against all odds. But then he goes berserk inside the villain's secret lair! But I suppose it's understandable that he is stuck there and has to defend himself, and this also gives us an opportunity to see him fight God knows how many armed guards.  But

again what's Bruce Lee's plan? Keep fighting till everyone is dead? At one point a bunch of prisoners grab a bad guy and Bruce seems to get excited to see that they still have some fight left in them. And then instead of freeing them and getting some more support that way, he just runs away and gets caught himself! How about freeing the prisoners before displaying his nun-chuck skills? What is this, an exhibition (can't practice what you preach huh!)?

But hey, if that's what it takes to stage a good fight, then so be it, it's a Kungfu movie after all. Bruce Lee is just so good that he drops every single one of those hundreds of guards in single decisive blows. This was a fun trick initially in the tournament to show just how good he really is. But now, I think, it became an overkill, but then you know, I never encountered a grandmaster from Shaolin temple so I can't know for sure.

But nothing short of a Hulk-Tony Jaa hybrid can take this Bruce Lee down! I liked the similar surrounded-by-an-army type of fight that Tony Jaa did in the Protector/Ong-Bak movie much better though. Tony Jaa actually displayed Muai Thai moves that might plausibly disable opponents within seconds in a real combat (like manipulating joints etc). Or may be it was just too late in the night and the guards were disgruntled because of low wages or something, so they decided to not put up a fight, I mean I wouldn't fight a Shaolin grandmaster for just 30cents/night, no one will! After a while though Bruce runs into some corner and is immediately trapped! The whole thing plays out as if Kien Shih has been observing the whole thing all this time and perhaps never intended to kill Bruce (or else he could just set the room on fire or something easy), which makes the whole fight scene even more pointless!

And then John Saxon bites Bolo Yeung in the calf! I don't know if this was supposed to be a sarcasm on the American way of doing things or something but the fact that John Saxon actively volunteered  to fight and then won by cheating didn't really work for me. Not one bit. I have to assume that it was Bruce Lee's way of saying - "See, this is how these Americans fight - dirty. This is what they did to me too back when I was younger."  Or may be Bolo missed the "Defensive techniques against biters 101" class in his Kungfu school. Poor guy!

Another thing that I feel could make it all more interesting is an intimidating but yet relatable villain. I mean I'm totally for wolverine claws that Kien Shih is into, but ultimately he's basically a cripple/amputee with a zero personality! I'll come back to the lack of personality thing in a bit, but first let's talk about the claws - Claws don't work like knives and swords because there is no wrist movement. Unless one has claws like Sabretooth (from Xmen), they can be countered with pretty much any medium ranged weapon. These Hanman claws seemed more like a necessity for the poor cripple! Speaking of which, Kien Shih looks more like a constipated businessman than a world class fighter and crime overlord, which is sort of true as the guy technically is running a business after all, so the movie sort of got that right! Still, I wonder how it would have looked like

, a rebel Shaolin master (which he is anyway), some mix of traditional and western, rather than jumping around in a conservative suit. As expected though, he is no match for the invincible Bruce Lee and has to flee into some crazy mirror room where Bruce gets so confused that his ears stop working and he gets slashed a few times. I'm still not sure about the original purpose of that room though. Did Kien Shih got that room constructed for the emergency when Shaolin temple decides to send their best fighter to help the prodigal son see the error of his ways? How about a room with a shotgun for this type of emergency? It was such a shame to see him die in an unprepared fight with some punka-s monk, after coming all this way to this secluded unclaimed island, building a completely self-sufficient fortress and setting up a complicated international business around locally manufactured drugs and imported women while recruiting international fighters via Kungfu tournaments as his new henchmen. Yes, such a shame!

In a nutshell, Enter the Dragon is one of those cases where the whole is smaller than the sum of its parts - Negative Synergy, if you will. Bruce did it by the book, added different scenes and back stories, story arcs and characters that make perfect sense in their own ways; it's just that they don't work together as a whole. I'd say it's a common rookie mistake and Bruce would've avoided it in the sequels, but sadly we'll never know...

That being said, I do have a simple idea that'd fix all these problems by making a simple change - by adding more complexity to the villain...I'll be covering it in the next article.

Continued - What small change would make Enter The Dragon Bruce Lee's best movie ever?