The Way Of The Dragon Details

This was the only film martial arts icon Bruce Lee had complete control over, being director, writer and fight choreographer. Maybe he should have had help in some areas, for it's a desperately thin tale of about a country bumpkin, played by Lee (the antithesis of the character he plays in Enter the Dragon), who arrives in Rome to help out at a Chinese restaurant that's at the mercy of local gangsters. It's typical of its genre; the dubbing is lousy, the characters are mere ciphers, dodgy seventies shirts plague the screen and there are too many clumsy comedy routines that play well in Hong Kong but look merely amateurish to us. However, the action more than compensates: Lee's face-off with Chuck Norris inside the Colosseum is one of the best two-man scraps in movie history. Norris had previously worked with Lee on the Matt Helm movie The Wrecking Crew, where Lee was fight choreographer.

A kung fu movie incongruously shifted from the East to Italy, where it seems silly, although the fight sequences are well done.