Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Uriah43 This movie takes place in pre-World War 2 Shanghai when the Japanese were involved with expanding their empire at the expense of China. As a result Shanghai was considered an international city in which the major powers at the time pretty much used as they saw fit. Anyway, it's during this time that a martial arts student by the name of "Chen Zhen" (Bruce Lee) returns to the dojo that meant so much to him. When he arrives he finds that his beloved master has died and is in the process of being buried. After a few days of intense bereavement Chen angrily demands to know how his master died. When told the official diagnosis was pneumonia Chen immediately rejects that explanation and suspects a more sinister cause. Not long afterward some members of a nearby Japanese dojo arrive and disrespectfully taunt those who are paying a final homage to their late master. This infuriates Chen who decides to take matters into his own hands and pay a visit to the rival dojo later that night. Now, rather than reveal any more of the movie and risk ruining it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this was one of the first martial arts films shown to American audiences and it made a huge impression at the time. Even so, while it is certainly good, I don't consider it to be the best martial arts film ever made. I say this because the dubbing on the film that I watched was extremely bad. Additionally, the first fight scene between Bruce Lee and Yi Feng (as the Japanese martial arts instructor named "Yoshida") was rather pathetic. Along with that the film quality wasn't exactly top-notch either. On the plus side this movie features the best martial arts expert to have ever acted on screen bar none. Likewise, with the exception of the fight scene mentioned earlier, the rest of the combat scenes were quite excellent. I especially liked the fight between Chen and "Petrov" (Robert Baker). I also liked the addition of Nora Miao (as "Yuen Le-erh"). Be that as it may I thought this was a good movie and I rate it as slightly above average.

bcheng93 before i start of on the review i just want to ask,"which other essentially non-American movie star (although he was born in San Francisco) is still on TV commercials over 40 years after his last completed film? i just saw 2 commercials on TV on the same day(no less), during major time-slots, one was a major car company and the other was a leading brand soda-pop. the mans legend lives to this day and far beyond, what is it about Bruce lee?there has been 4 major stars of kung-fu movies that actually studied the martial-arts. Bruce lee, jet-li, Donnie yen, and Vincent zhao. one was even a world champion(jet-li) for a few years. Jackie, sammo, and yuen baio don't count, because they studied peking opera dance and acrobatics. my favorite out of all of them is Bruce lee. mark my words, just like there will never be another James Dean, there will never be another Bruce lee. the mans a legend and he had a total of four completed films, the last one in 1973, after that there were countless imitations. so if you are a true fan of Bruce lee, his last completed film was "enter the dragon" in 1973. he was about to take the world by storm right before his death.OK, on to the movie...the setting is pre-world war 2 shanghai China, and it is about his masters poisoning death by the hands of the Japanese, while Bruce was away. he comes back for the funeral and is immediately suspicious unlike his other classmates.the investigation goes deeper, he finds out people from his school were directly involved with the death and the bodies start piling-up from there on. the pacing got a little bit slow during the middle but thats okay, it wasn't just a kung-fu movie, there was serious acting in it too. it is just the awesome imagery Bruce lee conveys when he is doing his thing...it is like on a visceral level impossible to duplicate. i love kung-fu movies in general but i have to say, there is no one like Bruce Lee...his style was his own and everybody tried to imitate him and everybody failed miserably or it was just meant to be comical. forget about other kung-fu movie stars trying to imitate him..., ever since i can remember(early 1980's)of my childhood in NYC, i would see him on TV, i walk down the street and guys are imitating him, i see t-shirts of him and this is in the United States...i can imagine how crazy it must have been in Hong Kong.when Bruce lee did his moves they look so real and he was incredibly quick, like a cat and the closest i've seen in speed is jet li. watching Bruce lee beat up bad-guys is like a guilty pleasure that you don't mind. there is so many classic images from this movie and they are like burned into my mind and i will never forget those images...the initial dojo fight, the ending where the shot ends on a freeze frame and like a hundred other shots in the movie. this movie is bleaker then his other three films, but it was shot beautifully, more so then the other 3 films.thank you for your 4 completed films and may your legend and myth live on forever!

londonscot2003 I'd never seen a Bruce Lee film before, maybe bits and pieces here and there, but this was the first one I just sat down and watched all the way through. I was expecting to be a little bit bored by a bunch of fake action events and no worthwhile plot. I soon found however that the movie was quite intriguing from the start, and for more reasons than one. First thing is, I didn't know that Bruce Lee could ACT. He's got this charisma, which on one hand goes part and parcel with the intensity of fierceness during the fight, yet on the other hand, he's no one-dimensional character either, and there are a lot of good dramatic scenes between characters in between the fights. Actually on-screen drama time is quite a bit more minute for minute than fight scenes, which I was happy to discover. Oh, there is definitely enough fighting, but not to the detriment of the story which grows and develops suspensefully.'Fist of Fury', set in colonial Shanghai times, is the story of a Japanese martial arts school trying to shut down a Chinese one, to which Lee belongs, after killing their master, and is the basis for a lot of very good fight scenes and just a touch of humor as Lee goes fugitive and then evading the law and donning a variety of disguises, single handedly takes them down one by one (and sometimes all together at the same time). This synopsis however doesn't do justice to the atmosphere of the story, the resonant feeling of 1970s "old Shanghai", rich in violence and Japanese/Chinese historic background. I can see now why Bruce Lee is still revered as the icon of bad@ss 70s cool - but his personality carried very well into scenes beyond the fight, unlike say Jet Li.

nicholls_les I always swap between this film and Enter the dragon being my favourite Bruce Lee Film. ETD is slicker but the few fight scenes that there are in this film are among Bruce Lee's best in my opinion. The reason is that he is acting while fighting. He is supposed to be this crazy guy who is driven mad by his masters murder and this sure comes through in the fight scenes. Two in particular are when he kills the guy involved in poisoning his master ( acted by the same guy who was the Big Boss in the first Chinese Martial Arts Film Lee did ) 'Why did you kill my teacher then?' and then at the Japanese school when he says ' I will allow you to leave, Scram, Scram, Scraaaam!' Pure magic. Also the fight against the Russian allows Bruce to show off some excellent Kung fu skills ( apart from the silly hand waving scene,what was that supposed to be about? ) When Bruce switches styles from Kung Fu, Karate and Western Boxing to confuse the Russian it is Bruce showing Jeet Kune Do at it's best. The film has it's silly comic elements, like the rickshaw throwing scene, but this was probably Lo Wei's (Director) idea. And the love scenes with Nora Mao are too long and unnecessary. All the other fighters in the film look really amateurish compared to Bruce with one or two exceptions. The scene where the Japanese boss flies through the wall after Bruce kicks him is actually a young Jackie Chan as a stunt man. Jackie mentions in his biography that he was the only stunt man willing to do that scene as it involved landing on his back. Jackie is also the stunt man who has his neck broken by Bruce in Enter the Dragon. All in all I still enjoy this film having watched it probably over 30 times.