enter the dragon (robert clouse, 1973)

Pauline Kael once referred to Bruce Lee as "the Fred Astaire of martial arts", and that's a good call. There is something so aesthetically pleasing about Lee's fight scenes that you watch, not just in awe, but with a sense that he is elevating the genre. There are limits to this ... as David Thomson wrote, "He seems to me to celebrate a spur of cinema that separates violence from life, and revels in it." Lee's movements are otherworldly, and we react to the violence the way we might to a Road Runner cartoon. When I am watching Lee, I barely think about the damage he is doing to others, because there is such enjoyment in just watching him move.

Lee's place in movie history goes beyond Enter the Dragon, but it remains true that if you only watch one of his movies, this is the one to see. Wikipedia lists the inflation-adjusted worldwide gross revenue at $2 billion. It's his most "Western" movie, an American-HK co-production with actors like John Saxon and Jim Kelly. It looms large in his legend because he died at age 32 just before the film was released. It's a genre classic of crucial importance, although I'd argue it doesn't really transcend the genre. Lee is great, the movie makes the most of his presence, but the action takes a while to get going and the plot is pretty standard. Certainly everyone should see it at least once, and if the genre appeals to you, you will watch it again and again.

[There is a lot of great trivia about the making of the film. My favorite is this: "Bruce Lee had laryngitis for three days of the shoot. The production team did not have vocalisations with the right intonation from Bruce to re-use in the fight scenes, so instead used stock sound clips of animals, including adolescent seagulls, for Bruce's vocal sound effects."]