First of all, Return of the Dragon (or Way of the Dragon, depending on where you live) is wacky. Extremely wacky. Yes, it's one of Bruce Lee's trademark action movies and you get to see him go toe to toe with a ton of bad guys, but there's a lot of both intentional and unintentional humor. Obvious setups like Bruce
fearfully fleeing from a gorgeous and aggressive topless woman are followed by the absurdity of Bruce beating bad guy after bad guy so easily that you wonder why they bother to fight him at all. He honestly doesn't get hit until his final battle, and then he's in trouble for all of 12 seconds before he's contemptuously dominating again. And the beyond awful dubbing of the voices is funnier on its own than half the comedies that are released today. The story concerns Bruce coming to Rome to help out a woman who's restaurant is being threatened by some kind of absurdly diverse mob. There's a pretty Chinese girl for him to rescue, a bunch of comic relief fighters to keep the bad guys busy until Bruce is ready to smack 'em around, and a hilariously offensive Asian stereotype running things as the number two for the "sinister" bad guy. There's not much serious about Return of the Dragon, so I wouldn't put it on par with Enter the Dragon (which is a classic, in my opinion). But, the fights are fun and there's nothing wrong with seeing a martial arts movie that tries to make you laugh, every once in a while. Check it out if you're a fan of Lee or older movies of this kind.
May 7, 2010
