Enter the Dragon

Enter the Dragon (1973) takes place at a martial arts tournament on an island. A fighter from the Shaolin temple enters on behalf of an intelligence service that suspects the island's owner, Han, of drug and human trafficking. Two American competitors travel with him and all three have their own reasons. It is the last film Bruce Lee completed. He died on 20 July 1973. The film opened in Hong Kong six days later, on 26 July, and reached Los Angeles on 19 August 1973. The production was assembled between Warner Bros., Lee's company Concord and Raymond Chow's Golden Harvest, one of the first large scale American and Hong Kong co-productions. Lee rewrote substantial parts of the script without taking credit. He reworked Michael Allin's text, rejected the idea of playing a James Bond style agent and insisted on the Shaolin monk. The title Enter the Dragon was also his choice, against studio resistance. Two future stars appear as uncredited extras. Jackie Chan plays guards in the fights and Sammo Hung appears in the opening bout. It cost 850,000 dollars and across all its releases has grossed roughly 400 million dollars worldwide. The hall of mirrors finale is the most copied sequence in it. It runs 102 minutes. Good for: martial arts cinema, Bruce Lee, and seventies genre production. Less good for: the plot is thin and the sections with the two American characters slow it down. The women are functional. The dubbing and sound are of their period, and in some versions the dialogue is out of sync.