The Fuckingest Action Movie Ever Made

Barring Game of Death, which only includes incomplete footage, I have now seen every major Bruce Lee film and TV show he ever recorded. Like many an artist’s career, his, too, got crispy at the end.

After The Green Hornet, where Lee played the best sidekick in order to one day be the best hero, his opportunities in the US dried up. Frustrated, he went back to Hong Kong a few years later. Filmmaking standards were not on the level he would have liked them to be, but at least here, people were willing to work with him and finance his movies.

With his next three releases, things finally came together. The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, and The Way of the Dragon went on to make $50, $100, and $130 million US dollars, respectively, each one completely shattering the global box office record for a Hong Kong–based movie set by the last. With budgets of $100,000-$130,000, these movies earned back between 500 and 1,000 times their investment.

Lee was happy but not satisfied. He was already reaching the world, but it would take another stage to send the most important message: Only once he starred in a Hollywood film would the movie industry—and the West at large—hold Asian actors equal in star-power to their white counterparts.

His real mission, however, always remained artistic. He wanted to push the boundaries of filmmaking all while creatively, genuinely expressing himself and his ideas. And though he would not have chosen to return to Hong Kong had the universe not sent him back there, it was precisely his successes there which ultimately opened the final door to him.

Between January and April of 1973, Bruce shot his first and, sadly, last, Hollywood film. It was a co-production between Lee’s Hong Kong film company, Warner Bros., and Golden Harvest, the company behind his previous movies. Towards the end of the shoot, in one of the last letters he ever wrote, Lee implored Ted Ashley, a personal friend and then head of the US film studio, to be fair, genuine, and give this one all he got—just as he, Bruce, would do the same:

You see, Ted, my obsession is to make, pardon the expression, the fuckingest action motion picture that has ever been made. In closing, I will give you my heart, but please do not give me your head only; in return, I, Bruce Lee, will always feel the deepest appreciation for the intensity of your involvement.

And? Did he do it? In Enter the Dragon, Bruce conveniently stars as Lee, a Shaolin monk tapped by British intelligence to investigate a mysterious martial arts tournament used as cover for a former disciple’s drug and prostitution ring. The film has everything you’d want in a great kung fu movie: multiple prominent fighters with different styles, a compelling story and dialogue, combat with and without weapons, and lots and lots of fighting.

But to really understand it, I not only had to look at the numbers. I also had to watch another movie: Live and Let Die, released only a few months later, the first James Bond movie starring Roger Moore as the then-already-legendary spy. That movie, too, has lots of stuff you’d want: car chases, clever agent gadgets, and beautiful actors delivering clever one-liners. But compared to Enter the Dragon, it feels almost hollow. A blockbuster busting lots of blocks but without soul.

The Bond movie is fun, but it feels comical and lacks emotional depth. It’s as if the eponymous hero was mostly on holiday seducing women while occasionally wandering into a Black drug cartel’s traps. The film had 10 times the budget of Lee’s, and you can feel it. Bond gets out of his quagmires so easily and nonchalantly, one has to wonder if he is human at all. He has a magnetic watch which he uses extensively. There’s a car chase, a bus chase, an airplane chase, and a boat chase—which led to the destruction of 27 speedboats, eight planes, and at least one double-decker bus. Live crocodiles, real sharks, and automated guns hidden in all kinds of places: The creators spared no expense—and yet, much of what happens doesn’t make all too much sense.

Much like Lee, Bond is tasked with garnering evidence against a drug lord’s illegal activities. Yet every time he gets close, he either escapes with only his life or destroys much of what he is supposed to report. He patronizes women along the way which nonetheless throw themselves at him—a harder sell now than it was back then, but even by 70s standards, their behavior is hardly believable.

Running on $800,000 instead of $7 million, Enter the Dragon had none of these options, and it forced everyone to rely on good writing, the creative use of sets and props, and, most of all, excellent physical combat. The result is that Lee’s film shines with ancient Eastern philosophy, strong characters standing up for themselves, and the most ingenious fight scenes ever devised up to that point.

In its initial run, Enter the Dragon grossed over $100 million US dollars. It was a bit shy of his last Hong Kong film but a resounding success nonetheless. Live and Let Die raked in $161 million, being the eighth film in an already successful franchise. But unlike Bond, who moved on to the next installment soon thereafter, Lee’s last movie kept getting re-release after re-release. To date, it has grossed over $400 million, which makes it the highest-grossing kung fu movie of all time. Adjusted for inflation, this also puts it on par with modern world record holders like Spider-Man, Star Wars, and the Avengers. It would take over 50 years for another low-budget movie to eclipse its success—and that’s to say nothing of the thousands of kung fu movies, camera shots and angles, and movie tropes it inspired in the decades hence.

Ask any global kung fu star—Jackie Chan, who even has a small, uncredited role in Enter the Dragon, Jet Li, or Donnie Yen—they’ll all name Bruce Lee as a major inspiration. Without Bruce, the entire genre of film would not exist as it does today.

So yes. Congrats, Mr. Lee. That really was the fuckingest action movie ever made—and every step you had to take to get there was exactly the one you were meant to make.