Fist of Fury

The second movie starring Bruce Lee. This is a classical story in the martial arts movie genre with a Chinese hero fighting for the honour of the Chinese agains foreign oppression and aggression. A superior Chinese martial artist is murdered after being poisoned by the Japanese. All typical Bruce Lee movie elements appear again with the noises, blood tasting and bare chested fighting. Compared to ‘The Big Boss’ the story is better this time as it is a classical storyline with the good Chinese against the bad Japanese oppressors. Many actors from the big boss return including James Tien, Nora Miao and Maria Yi. The acting is still not all that great but the fight sequences remain classic and all in all this movie is a lot more timeless than ‘The Big Boss’. The movie seems to have also borrowed heavily from ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ with the switching of extreme face close ups between Bruce Lee and Nora Miao. If you close your eyes and listen only to the music you might think you are in a Western all together. The violence, high body count and the lone hero are also in line with these Spaghetti westerns. Where this movie borrowed from Spaghetti westerns it has become a reference for many modern movies including for example ‘Fist of Legend’ and ‘Kiss of the Dragon’, both with Jet Li. The final show down in the garden of the Japanese head quarters reminded me of ‘Kill Bill’. I watched this one again with my son but have seen it already countless times. It survives multiple views easily. Its weak points are already apparent upon first view.