Director: Lo Wei

Starring: Bruce Lee, Nora Miao, James Tien, Maria Yi

Featuring: Robert Baker, Wei Ping-Ao, Riki Hashimoto

Fist of Fury is Bruce Lee’s second film and is arguably his best in terms of fight sequences. Set Shanghai in 1908, the story begins with our main character, Chen (played of course by Bruce Lee), arriving at his martial arts school for the funeral of his beloved teacher. At the funeral a delegation from a Japanese Bushido school arrive and present the Chinese mourners with a large tablet inscribed to the “Sick Man of Asia”. As the plot unfolds, Chen soon learns that the people from the Japanese school had, in fact, murdered his teacher. This quickly turns Chen’s grief into rage and before long he sets out as a one man fighting machine in search of revenge for his teacher.

The idea of fighting for honour is engraved within Chinese culture and the storyline for Fist of Fury was clearly designed to tap into these kinds of sentiments. When (near the beginning of the film) Bruce Lee enters the Japanese martial arts school, beats the entire school up then yells out “The Chinese are not sick men!” it must have seemed to a cinema-going Hong Kong audience that all the humiliation felt during the Japanese occupation of the second world war had finally been removed. It is no surprise therefore, that Fist of Fury went on to smash box office records across Hong Kong and indeed most of South East Asia.

Over thirty years after the release of Fist of Fury, film critics appear to generally agree that fight-wise, Fist of Fury is a classic, but directional wise it was far from perfect. Some of the criticisms that always seem to resurface are; the set looks cheap, there are countless bad camera angles, the music is not as good as in The Big Boss, the villains look and act like ridiculous comic book characters, the dialogue is bad and (in the English version) the dubbing is laughable! Another element of the film that has received much criticism is the half-hearted attempt at a sub-plot that results in an awkward, unconvincing and out of place romantic scene. Incidentally, there are credible reports that during the filming for the romantic scene, Lo Wei, had lost interest and was caught listening to horse racing on the radio when he should had been on set directing the scene!

Perhaps the biggest stumbling block for Fist of Fury however, is that the storyline and most of the characters are two-dimensional. In other words, the film is a mixture of black or white (or good verses evil) but with no shades of grey anywhere! In particular, the Japanese are portrayed almost as though they are some kind of inherently evil race. As groups and as individuals they are made to seem incapable of having any compassion at all. This is in stark contrast to the Chinese who are portrayed as peace-loving, decent and kind people. The only character in the entire film with any real depth or complexity is Lee’s character, Chen. On the one hand he is out to avenge his teacher’s death and to restore honour to his school, but on the other hand, he has became a ferocious whirlwind of rage and destruction and his actions appear to go against everything that his teacher and the rest of the Chinese school have lived by.

From a martial arts perspective Bruce Lee’s performance is arguably the greatest in cinema history. His fight scenes are blindingly fast and shockingly well choreographed. We see Bruce Lee take on multiple opponents. We see poles swinging at full speed and missing Lee’s head by only a few centimetres. We see Bruce Lee’s first onscreen use of nunchaku fighting sticks. We also see (for a mere split second or two!) the execution of one or two semi-realistic Jeet Kune Do type moves such as finger jabs and low level kicks.

Fist of Fury is a film that will strike at the heart of anyone who feels or has ever felt oppressed. Yes, there may be directional flaws. Yes, the production value may be low at times. However, in terms of both martial arts action and raw emotional content, Fist of Fury is a masterpiece.

Film Review By: Edward Davison

You can buy this DVD now at: www.hongkong-store.com