The Big Boss

I recently watched ‘The Big Boss’ again with my son. This movie from 1971 start Bruce Lee in his first major film role as the leading star. It is vintage Bruce Lee, including extreme close ups of his face, grimacing, the tasting of blood before he really unleashes his devils, the howling sounds he makes and of course the lightning fast kicks and punches in fight sequences with Bruce Lee bare chested against dozens of adversaries. At the start we see Lee going into ‘hiding’ in Thailand to get away from the fights he keeps getting into at home. Although he tries to stay out of fights this doesn’t last long and after drug traffickers start murdering his friends he is forced to fight again. There is little more to the story and there are few sub plots plus a romantic sideline with Maria Yi but overall the story is flimsy, the acting ‘not great’ and music ridiculously bad. This is clearly a low budget production with the only thing going for it the spectacularly fast, hard hitting and theatrical fight scenes from Bruce Lee. Compared to those the ones starring James Tien in the beginning of the movie while Bruce Lee still keeps his promise not to fight are almost laughable. There is a nice fight sequence with James Tien facing the mob of the Big Boss near the end of the movie though. The fight scenes with Bruce Lee are classic, the rest of the movie is barely watchable and best soon forgotten. Luckily there is lots of fighting going on despite the lead character’s promise.