Not gonna rate this one because I didn’t finish it. My car died at the drive-in and I had to get a jump. Very embarrassing! Anyway, I liked what I saw. Strange to watch a movie that you can fully recognize as having influenced an entire generation of film lovers while also knowing that the movie and most of the movies it has influences have just totally passed you by. Was delighted when the whole drive-in honked at Jim Kelly beating up two racist cops. Also delighted at everyone honking as Jim Kelly was about to have sex. The drive-in loves to honk at a horny moment. Who can blame em! It’s what the bumper stickers want!

John Saxon looks like Zac Efron. Why isn’t the news talking about this?

60s Bond film through the lens of 70s martial arts/blaxploitation. Lee was an unbelievable athlete.

If you put martial arts, blaxploitation, and espionage into a tea pot it becomes the tea pot, boiling over with perfection thanks to an immense Lalo Schifrin score, John Saxon, Jim Kelly, a claw/knife handed Dr. No villain, a shitload of mirrors, and Bruce Lee. 

Incredibly influential and endlessly enjoyable, this is essential 1973 cinema.

Bruce Lee spends a great deal of this movie looking around, quietly observing everything and throwing off a calculatedly obnoxious bad motherfucker attitude, an attitude he proceeds to back up with his obvious skill as an athletic performer. But it's not the fighting that makes ENTER THE DRAGON great (the fights are fine, shot a little blandly but unobtrusively by Clouse). it's that Lee's less a martial artist here than a vibe, not merely quicker and tougher and stronger but able to assess and recalibrate the frequency of everything around him, like that Looney Tunes gag where someone strikes a tuning fork but it makes them vibrate instead.

I'm sure one could criticize any number of stereotypical and otherwise problematic elements of this, but from another and I would argue more productive angle it begins to seem like some kind of blueprint for a utopian popular cinema that never materialized, multiracial, multicultural, international, and antiauthoritarian. Jim Kelly refuses to submit to racist cops, Bruce Lee refuses to wear a uniform, John Saxon refuses to guillotine an innocent kitty cat, and the feds only show up as a closing punchline about their own uselessness.

73

"It's like a finger pointing away to the moon. Do not concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all of the heavenly glory."

Surely this isn't the same guy that got fucked up by Cliff Booth?!?!

"Now, you must remember: the enemy has only images and illusions behind which he hides his true motives. Destroy the image and you will break the enemy."

[35mm]

I know I said I was going to stop reviewing movies on here for a while but guess what it's been a while because this shit rocked.

Enter the Dragon has everything: Bruce Lee on a James Bondsian mission to an island kung fu tournament hosted by a warlord named Han. BRUCE LEE USES FUCKING NUNCHUCKS LET'S GOOOO. All the fight sequences rip. The side characters are fun and well-drawn, including Williams, a hip African-American kung fu ally, and Roper, a grizzled, degenerate gambler American (with a heart of gold). The iconic Hall of Mirrors fight scene, chef's kiss.

Just so 70's, so cool, this movie has everything, this movie has sauce like a MFer