Thursday, November 7, 2019

Fist of Fury (1972)

For this blog's five hundredth review the first martial arts film i ever saw, it was life changing...

Enter the Dragon was the breakthrough hit for Bruce but Fist of Fury remains the classic martial arts movie, and the classic Bruce Lee film. The story is fairly simple and nationalistic in parts and seldom subtle. Set in Shanghai before the Second World War, the teacher of a Chinese kung fu school is poisoned. His star student Bruce Lee returns home to investigate what happened to his teacher and doesn't have to look far to find out it is the evil Japanese led by Mr Suzuki (Chikara Hashimoto) who have killed him...

The story plays heavily on the racial prejudice the Chinese suffered in Shanghai in the early twentieth century. Bruce is set on revenge and is willing to pay the ultimate price to achieve it. Therefore the story is pretty predictable. But this is not a film for story telling it is a film for action.

The action is out of this world, the fight scenes in the Japanese bushido school are quite simply perfect examples of martial arts action. Perfectly paced and truly explosive. Scenes such as Sick Man of Asia at the start and Bruce fighting with his nunchakus have become iconic. It is a great film but incredibly violent as you might imagine.

It was the first martial arts film I ever saw, I started with one of the best.