Not taking away from the fact that Bruce Lee was the main man as a martial artist and guys like van damme couldn’t lace his boots in that regard; this movie is still a bit gritty and boring from time to time, with lots of drawn-out slow-drama filler content that ought to be condensed for a better action thriller movie viewing experience. In this way, it’s got vibes of an early James Bond or an early Indian Jones movie – they were massive deals in their day but just don’t cut the mustard in terms of consistent entertainment value by modern standards.
But Bruce Lee is not to blame for the extensive tedium here, since this was a Warner Bros production. Bruce was working on his own movie – Game Of Death – set to provide an even richer form of entertainment, even though Enter The Dragon was still massive for an early 70s movie. Sadly, he was killed a couple weeks before Enter The Dragon hit the big screen (so there may have been some things changed without his blessing) and he was far from done with making Game Of Death – the finished movie that exists by this name today is mostly made by someone else, mostly starring someone else, and is nothing compared to what Bruce’s movie would have been.
It only really gets interesting around a third of the way in – over half an hour in – when all the guest fighters arrive on Han’s Island to compete in Han’s Tournament, and Bruce has just befriended one of the others who himself is friends with another, so there’s already a whif of comradery. But the excitement only lasts a minute – it soon reverts back into prolonged scenes of nothing but mediocre music. On an objective level, the plot is gradually progressing, but on a subjective level, the script’s all very disjointed and the atmosphere is massively lacking compared to a movie like Bloodsport which copied the same core theme of a tournament where people come from far & wide to compete, and even took Bolo on as their main antagonist, but executed everything so much better, without any long boring bits whatsoever. Except of course, some of Bruce’s choreography, which can’t be topped by Van Damme or anyone else.
It starts getting much more interesting around half way into the movie, when the tournament finally begin, followed by night-time exploration of the Island by Bruce Lee in a ninja outfit – this series of scenes is a work of art, where Bruce shows us how to walk and fight like a ninja. He was not a master of Ninjutsu, but he understood its concepts and had plenty of transferrable skill from Kung Fu to make a really good go of it, the likes of which have probably never been seen on the big scene prior, nor after, to this day – although many have tried, the levels of authenticity are night and day apart.
When Bruce gets trapped in the underground complex, between dropping metal doors, near the end of the movie, it’s quite symbolic of how he was killed in real life, albeit in a different way, with unconventional tactics nevertheless. Perhaps nobody could beat him with empty hands and blunt-force weapons on this strange island where guns are banned (which is explained) and blades are reserved for the final boss, Mr Han (played quite well by Shih Kien) – this lack of edged weapons is not explained at all. However, with all the skill in the world against simple combatants, the moment he’s lured into a well staged trap, he couldn’t see it coming – his mind was too occupied with conventional fighting tactics, to his peril in the movie and in real life too (only 2 weeks before this movie hit the big screen). Bruce’s performance was outstanding, and most of the main supporting cast members did pretty good too, including Bolo Yeung, John Saxon, Jim Kelly, Geoffrey Weeks, and even Ahna Capri; even though they were working to a script that had plenty of ingredients but didn’t quite ‘click’ smoothly into place (again, comparing it to the likes of Bloodsport which builds an enticing atmosphere and holds onto it very well). Musical direction probably played a bit role in this, but the density of cool scenes vs filler junk is undoubtedly a massive factor too. I would have liked to see the middle be the beginning, the end be the middle, squeeze the junk out too, including massively compressing the mirrors scene at the very end, and then we’ve got room for an even better ending and we honestly wouldn’t be missing anything whatsoever, it would just be a way better movie then.
As it stands, all things considered, even though this was by far Bruce’s highest budget movie and it made him the highest paid movie star in the world in 1973, I don’t even think this is Bruce’s best movie, from a smooth action hero connoisseur’s perspective, it’s just too slow and gritty and lacking in coolness. I rate it just OK, on a par with other movies I’ve rated OK – not as good as the movies I’ve rated Decent and above, but better than the movies that I’ve rated as (barely) Watchable. This is purely from an action entertainment perspective. Of course from a martial artist’s point of view it’s an absolutely priceless source of reference and inspiration on so many levels. Bear in mind also, by the early 70s when this came out, we’d had a decade of Sean Connery starring in slow-paced early James Bond movies, and we hadn’t yet seen the slightly pacier Indiana Jones movies of the 80s. We also hadn’t yet seen the early Star Wars movies which began in 1977. So Bruce was really pushing the boat out in the early 70s, and I have no doubt if he lived to complete Game Of Death it would have been many levels better than any movie he ever made prior where he didn’t really have full control of what he was doing – Way Of The Dragon (1972) was where he had the most freedom, then in Enter The Dragon (1973) he allegedly controlled all fight choreography, and had a lot of freedom in planning action scenes, but didn’t write or control the core script. Game Of Death was set to be the real masterpiece, but it was barely started when he was killed.