Title - Enter the Dragon
Type - Feature Fiction
Genre - Action, Adventure, Martial Arts
Director - Robert Clouse
Country - USA
Again, here we are with another oldie! Enter the Dragon, one of my favourite films and the best martial arts films of all time! I first watched this in the 80s as a child when my father brought home the rented cassette which we'd play on the VCR repeatedly. This is one of those films loved by everyone regardless of personal genre preference - that's how you know it's good! From hammer-smashing-pumpkin sound-effects to the magnificent martial arts choreography by Bruce Lee, this acton film remains one of the best ever made.
Raymond Chow was instrumental in Bruce Lee's earlier films serving as the director; here, he plays a key role as well working with Robert Clouse to bring this legendary screen masterpiece to life. Enter the Dragon was also Lee's most successful (as well as first major Hollywood feature fiction) film hitherto his untimely death that prematurely robbed us what was possible one of the most unique men in history.
From my little experience as both a film lover and film maker, I have learned to appreciate the fact that 'simplicity is the shortest distance between 2 points' - a phrase Bruce Lee himself uses in his book, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do (1975). I echo this principle with regard to scripting or, if you like, with regard to story-plotting. A good film is not necessarily one with a complicated script. Inception (2010) or Shutter Island, could be drawn as examples of films with complex storylines as well as great films at the same time, but the two (complicated scripts and 'good films') are not necessarily correlated. A good film, like Enter the Dragon, could have a very simple script. Many people said that Black Panther (2018) had a 'simplistic storyline' and was hence overrated. Some say that they did not see the fuss why it broke all the records it did. But what many people fail to realise, especially those who look at film at face-value (which, funny enough, includes many filmmakers as well), is that what makes a great film is a cocktail of elements. Black Panther and Enter the Dragon are examples of films that hacked this seamlessly and that's why they are what they are - cult classics.
We will soon begin to have actor reviews [both male and female, local (Kenyan) and international] and just to get slightly into that now, I'd say Bruce is one of the few action heroes who equally capably carries his weight as an actor in general. His performance in this film was unquestionably well done, martial arts aside. From dialogue to facial expressions to body language, he carried the character Lee in the best way any actor could, but probably was the only actor who could given that, to have played Lee in Enter the Dragon, you needed to be Bruce Lee - have I made sense?
The camera work was amazing (for the time) considering this was the first of the few films to believably execute martial arts choreography. Jim Kelly, Anna Capri and John Saxon were spot-on casting. Here's a trivia for you: Shih Kien, who played Mr. Han, had to learn his lines phonetically because he couldn't speak English, a thing he did perfectly given most people didn't notice (including myself). Another trivia - see if you can spot Jackie Chan in the film.
Enough for today! Watch the film again because I do not know how anyone could be a film lover and not have seen this picture at least thrice.
Rating - 5/5 stars
Review by Robert Mũnũku
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Type - Feature Fiction
Genre - Action, Adventure, Martial Arts
Director - Robert Clouse
Country - USA
Again, here we are with another oldie! Enter the Dragon, one of my favourite films and the best martial arts films of all time! I first watched this in the 80s as a child when my father brought home the rented cassette which we'd play on the VCR repeatedly. This is one of those films loved by everyone regardless of personal genre preference - that's how you know it's good! From hammer-smashing-pumpkin sound-effects to the magnificent martial arts choreography by Bruce Lee, this acton film remains one of the best ever made.
Raymond Chow was instrumental in Bruce Lee's earlier films serving as the director; here, he plays a key role as well working with Robert Clouse to bring this legendary screen masterpiece to life. Enter the Dragon was also Lee's most successful (as well as first major Hollywood feature fiction) film hitherto his untimely death that prematurely robbed us what was possible one of the most unique men in history.
From my little experience as both a film lover and film maker, I have learned to appreciate the fact that 'simplicity is the shortest distance between 2 points' - a phrase Bruce Lee himself uses in his book, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do (1975). I echo this principle with regard to scripting or, if you like, with regard to story-plotting. A good film is not necessarily one with a complicated script. Inception (2010) or Shutter Island, could be drawn as examples of films with complex storylines as well as great films at the same time, but the two (complicated scripts and 'good films') are not necessarily correlated. A good film, like Enter the Dragon, could have a very simple script. Many people said that Black Panther (2018) had a 'simplistic storyline' and was hence overrated. Some say that they did not see the fuss why it broke all the records it did. But what many people fail to realise, especially those who look at film at face-value (which, funny enough, includes many filmmakers as well), is that what makes a great film is a cocktail of elements. Black Panther and Enter the Dragon are examples of films that hacked this seamlessly and that's why they are what they are - cult classics.
We will soon begin to have actor reviews [both male and female, local (Kenyan) and international] and just to get slightly into that now, I'd say Bruce is one of the few action heroes who equally capably carries his weight as an actor in general. His performance in this film was unquestionably well done, martial arts aside. From dialogue to facial expressions to body language, he carried the character Lee in the best way any actor could, but probably was the only actor who could given that, to have played Lee in Enter the Dragon, you needed to be Bruce Lee - have I made sense?
The camera work was amazing (for the time) considering this was the first of the few films to believably execute martial arts choreography. Jim Kelly, Anna Capri and John Saxon were spot-on casting. Here's a trivia for you: Shih Kien, who played Mr. Han, had to learn his lines phonetically because he couldn't speak English, a thing he did perfectly given most people didn't notice (including myself). Another trivia - see if you can spot Jackie Chan in the film.
Enough for today! Watch the film again because I do not know how anyone could be a film lover and not have seen this picture at least thrice.
Rating - 5/5 stars
Review by Robert Mũnũku
Instagram - @nairobifilmgeek
Email - nairobifilmgeek@gmail.com
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