Every Bruce Lee movie ranked

In many areas of life, the combination of recency bias and genuine progress makes it easy to think that the latest is also the prettiest. However, this thought process does not apply to the martial arts movie genre, where the man who died in 1973 is still the yardstick by which all other stars are measured, and usually fails.

Bruce Lee's death at the age of 32 cut his life short, but not his legend. It can be easy to forget that his “Bruce Lee era” was just the final, star-making phase of his career. Before breaking out with his English name in “Green Hornet,” Lee appeared in 20 Hong Kong films, often using his Chinese name Lee Jun Fang and stage names such as Lee Siu Lung (“Little Dragon”). This means that the true Lee aficionado has plenty of relatively obscure material to wade through, from 1941's The Girl of the Golden Gate, in which he appears as a baby, to his drama The Thunderstorm (aka “Lei yu” 1957). and “The Orphan” (aka “Ren hai gu hong”, 1960).

However, when we think of Bruce Lee, we usually think of a very specific period in his career when he used the name to create a series of instant martial arts classics. Because he died so young, he only had time to act in a few of these impressive films, but luckily for viewers, many of them are very good. But which of Bruce Lee's five films is the best? Let's find out.

There's no getting around it: Bruce Lee's latest 'Game of Death' movie is a mess. The five years between Lee's death in 1973 and the film's release in 1978 created a strange golem around the skeletonized remnant of what the film was originally meant to be. The footage Lee shot before his passing was peppered with additional scenes featuring idiosyncratic techniques, from semi-competent body doubles to cardboard cutouts of the dead star.

In 1972, Lee filmed a few scenes for Game of Death before going on to film Enter the Dragon (1973). The original plot revolved around a heist, and Lee's character spent much of the film scaling a large pagoda, facing increasingly difficult opponents. In a truly historic and time-consuming act of Brucesploitation, Golden Harvest studio and Enter the Dragon director Robert Clouse combined the available footage of Lee with an elaborate revenge tale that's 100 minutes long and contains about 12 minutes of Bruce Lee… depending on if you count footage of Lee's very real funeral that the film chose to include.

“Game of Death” has its moments. On the rare occasion that you actually see Lee, he's downright awesome. The film is also infamous for introducing its famous yellow jumpsuit, an iconic look inspired the behavior of Beatrix Kiddo (Uma Thurman) in “Kill Bill: Vol. 1”. However, if the shock factor of the film's many flaws and unpleasant origin story is too much—as it very well might—you might want to check out the 2019 release Game of Death Redux, the 40-minute version included in the Criterion collection Bruce Lee: His Greatest Hits' (2020) and focuses on Lee's original material.

“Big Boss” (sometimes known as “Fists of Fury”) may fall behind “Game of Thrones” when it comes to its pop culture significance, but it surpasses the 1978 film and earns its place among films. Bruce Lee's Greatest Hits because it is a complete movie. It also doesn't hurt that “Big Boss” is a lot of fun. It unleashes the legend Bruce Lee to the unwary world, or at least to Thailand, where the film takes place.

“Big Boss” takes a bit of bait with its characters, first focusing on the brave martial artist Hsu Chien (James Tien), but Lee plays the unassuming ice factory worker Chen Chaoan, who has made a solemn promise to stay. away from physical combat. It goes about as well as you'd expect, and as Tina's character exits stage left, Lee steps front and center to unleash her full fury.

It makes for a slow-burn experience where you can only watch a Bruce Lee movie after watching a significantly worse non-Bruce Lee martial arts movie that doesn't do “The Big Boss” any favors. Combine that with production values ​​that compare poorly to Lee's later fare, and the film is effectively a demo tape from an artist on the verge of a breakthrough. The intro is too long, the comedic punchlines and fights are cruder than you might expect, and the plot is weak even by the genre's standards. Still, the film from directorial duo Wei Lo and Chia-Hsien Wu remains an entertaining watch and essential viewing for any Lee fan.

What “The Big Boss” started, “Fist of Fury” perfected. Director Wei Lo's streamlined tale of Kung Fu student Chen Zheng's (Lee) quest for revenge against an antagonistic Japanese dojo has thrills, disguises, some particularly pointed commentary on Sino-Japanese mutual history — and, above all, Lee in full swing. , wail, rage, nunchuck invincibility mode.

If the image of Bruce Lee in your head is a Hong Kong Kung Fu hero, this is the best Lee movie for you. For all intents and purposes, Chen Zheng is presented as a borderline superhero who is completely incapable of losing a fair fight and is more than willing to fight dirty to the hilt. The film's consistently intense martial arts sequences do their best to make his nature a cheat code.

Regardless of Chen Zheng's ability to walk through a fully staffed dojo, what sets Fist of Fury apart from Lee's other martial arts films is its relatively serious tone. If Lee smiles here, it tends to be before or after a killing blow. No triumphant walks into the sunset for him either. As powerful as Zheng is, in the end he is just a man who is a victim of political forces, and he is completely powerless to stop. Sure, things are still as gritty as you'd expect from a 1970s martial arts flick, but the themes of discrimination and the obsessive, relentless nature of Jen's rampage ensure you won't mistake this for a Jackie Chan movie. rush

Thanks to the various completely Bruce Lee-less Bruceploitation movies that flooded the market after his death, diving into the star's filmography can be a surprisingly challenging case for a fan. It doesn't help that some of his actual films have multiple titles — for example, the 1972 film “Way of the Dragon” is sometimes billed as the 1974 film “Return of the Dragon.”

Regardless, however, the title card “Way of the Dragon” remains an essential part of martial arts cinema. Its improbable premise — a fight over the fate of a Chinese restaurant in Rome — works to its advantage, as Lee's rural martial artist Tan Lung deftly disrupts both prejudice and a star-studded adversary. “The Way of the Dragon” is a true showcase for Lee, as he not only stars, but also wrote and directed the film. Among the many events that ensue, one stands out above the rest. Indeed, the tense, tactical showdown at the Coliseum between Lee and fellow martial arts legend Chuck Norris (who plays Colt for hire) is one of the most legendary movie fights of all time — even with the otherwise slim. Norris eats a lot of cheeseburgers previously to become significantly larger than Lee.

That being said, the rest of the movie is also worth watching. From the simple and even negative first impression the main character makes on the other characters, to the laundry list of various martial artists he mows down after discovering his true talents, “Way of the Dragon” is a master class in making an effective martial arts movie. .

If you've ever seen a martial arts movie where the main character competes in a mystery tournament, there's a good chance the movie in question owes a debt to Bruce Lee's best-known film, Enter the Dragon. It brings together all the aspects of Lee's previous films, such as spy antics, revenge missions, memorable antagonists and great fight scenes, in one goofy yet extremely impressive and entertaining package that is rightly revered as one of the best kung fu movies in history. Even if nothing else in Lee's catalog interests you, be sure to check it out mind-blowing mirror scene in Enter the Dragon where his character, also called Lee, encounters Han (Kien Shih), a vicious villain who wouldn't look out of place in a James Bond film.

Lee died days before Enter the Dragon was released in Hong Kong, so he never got to see the impact his biggest film had on the world. However, he put in a lot of work to ensure that the film lived up to his vision. Lee did not show up on the first day of shooting due to a creative dispute with Warner Bros., which the studio attributed to Lee becoming nervous. Apart from this, “Enter the Dragon” faced many challenges which could potentially derail the film or even push Lee out of production. Fortunately, Lee prevailed and managed to make a Hollywood film that doesn't rely on traditional Western-style action tropes, but stays true to its Hong Kong action roots. To say the least, Lee's choice to do what he did best paid off.