A martial arts student in China returns to his school to find his teacher dead. Some Japanese fighters show up at the funeral to issue a challenge. This starts a chain of conflicts between the groups.
This is an iconic, early kung fu. It set the o.k. standard bar for future films. The plot must have been fresh at the time, but revenge became the default plot for all kung fu films to follow. The characters were a little shallow by today's standards, but it seemed more realistic that the hero would become a wanted murderer as the plot developed. It was also made very clear that he was the strongest fighter. English translated dialogue was all plot outline with no style or flavor. I imagine this would have been different to a Chinese speaking audience. Bruce Lee's acting was great though. He put on disguises to fool the Japanese group and portrayed different characters. The fights seemed to take full advantage of editing techniques to show damage to characters. There were also break away set pieces, slow motion and layering. Sets looked authentic and as mentioned before, Bruce had at least 4 costume changes. Camera-work looks standard by today's perspective because it actually set that standard. Most kung fu films before this don't look as good. I did not like the audio. It seemed that there was too much volume range between characters and very little music. IMDb has a 7.4/10 rating listed for this, AllMovie has a 3/5 AllMovie rating with 4.5/5 user ratings and Rotten Tomatoes lists 92% Tomatometer with 83% audience score for a 79.8% average. I would have agreed with the average consensus in 1972, but it feels kind of stale now. I rate it o.k.
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