While nowadays it’s wrestler that are the stable for fighters turning into actors, it was actually something that started with martial artists, with one of the highlights of the trop was the screeching man himself, Bruce Lee. An iconic figure that unfortunately suffered a brutal tragic loss and an early death, The Chinese sensation made a name for himself with his amazing martial arts skills and the movies that helped push him into a more international light. Though not very successful in Hollywood, he did slowly start to edge himself towards a broader audience with his movies highlight his fighting skills, one of which came out in 1971 ‘The Big Boss’. Cheng Chao-an (played by Bruce Lee) comes to visit his cousins in a remote village where he begins to start working along with them at an ice factory. Though seeming fine on the outside, on the inside, the people in charge are secretly using the business to sell heroin off to the public. His family start to discover the truth and slowly start to get picked off one by one, as well as their young female cousin, Chow Mei (played by Maria Yi) being kidnapped by the Boss of the operation, Hsiao Mi (played by Ying-Chieh Han). Though sworn to non-violence before arriving, Cheng breaks those vows and goes on a revenge trip to take down the company and make them pay for the death of his family. This movie was very well received at the time, being number 1 at the box office in Hong Kong, but removing the power fantasy that Lee brings to his movie[‘s shows that the movie has a lot of moments and elements that aren’t the strongest, even for the simple beat-em-up movie it was going for. As a sample taster for Bruce Lee showing off the qualities he’s best at, it works fine enough, but not so much as an actual movie.

The initial set-up for the movie isn’t as weak as initially expected. While these movies that are solely made for the martial arts can have very weak plots, this one starts one that, while still pretty shallow and brief, could have worked with the situation it was in. The locations, characters and motivations are built up just enough in the opening third that would have worked really well if the remaining parts of the movie were made up of nothing but fighting, which it feels like it’s going to do. The film’s goofier tone along with the obvious direction it’s taking starts the film off in a silly, but likeable way. But that’s where it changes directions and goes down an incredibly slow and predictable direction that only seems to drag the film’s feet until the final moments which shows off what the middle section of the movie should have been about. Changing from a scenario with a man trying to find out the secrets behind the company who killed his family, to his family not respecting him because he gets caught up in the limelight of the high life and he gets down and mopey and all the usual boring stuff. While the movie’s tone and quick to understand narrative feels like it should be like a cheesy stupidly simple action movie, this divergence in the middle of the film takes away that understanding and kills the movie’s pacing. This movie feels awkward and a bit all over the place, which is understandable as the film’s background history features a lot of trouble like hazardous props, thrown together scripts, and a director that wouldn’t even stick around for the shooting, it makes sense that some of the scenes don’t flow together, the movie is poorly dubbed (both into English AND into Chinese), the story takes a pointless detour, and even some of the fights start to get repetitive during the halfway mark.

Since the story doesn’t have that much focus, it’s no surprise that the characters aren’t that much stronger. Not only do most of them get killed off relatively quickly so it’s hard to get invested into them, but it doesn’t even feel like most of them are anything other than dummies waiting to be killed. The female cousin is only there to be the emotional support, or just the one who cries a lot, most of the cousins are pretty forgettable and really two-faced with how quickly they can love or hate Bruce Lee’s character, and the villains are pretty one-note shifty bad guys as well. Bruce Lee does give his character a bit more attention but it’s nothing special, but if anything does stand-out in this movie, it is Bruce Lee himself. He does feel like the one person in the movie who has a certain presence to them, this feeling of superiority like everyone around him is inexperienced or weaker by comparison. That along with his serviceable acting (particularly facially) and of course his masterful martial arts, it’s clear that the focus of the movie, as well as one of the key reasons for watching this movie, is all on him. Almost every actor is clearly giving it everything they have, even if it does come across as a bit cheesy at times, the Chinese dub does have a bit more respect and attempt to make a movie, while the English dub feels too overly cheery and commercial sounding. This movie’s English dub is incredibly hoaky and not even trying to match the lip flaps, yet it feels like sometimes even the Chinese voices don’t match the lips all the time, it leads to some good laugh here and there, particularly with the English voices.

The one thing that everyone should be looking for when coming into this movie is the martial arts; coming from Bruce Lee himself, it should lead to some memorable fights at the very least. In some ways, it delivers exactly what people should be expecting. There are quite a few fights in the movie, they are paced out in a way that they don’t feel too cramped, and the fight choreography is actually pretty good, especially from Bruce himself, who seems to be more polished and precise compared to everyone else. The climax of the film has a wonderfully done fight between Lee and the bad guy, and it’s easily the best fight in the movie, with the quick moves, the inclusion of weapons, the cinematography, the speed of the moves, the choreography, it’s all pretty impressive. But on the other hand, since most of the fights are particularly the same, they start to get a bit repetitive as the film goes on. They all seem to be one vs group fights, they usually feature weapons that don’t do much, it’s usually one person picked off one at a time, there’s a lot of jumping, kicking and screaming, and then it usually just ends abruptly. Though they can be impressive to watch, when the variety starts to become less important, it starts to get a bit tiring. The music cues can be a bit overly blatant at times, being even more noticeable as the movie is surprisingly lacking music in the Chinese dub, but that can add to the goofier tone it goes for.

The Big Boss isn’t one of the best films that Bruce Lee has ever done, it has a lot of things holding it back from even working as a stupid action film with a ton of clichés and goofy moments. Those elements would have been welcome compared to the slow and dull direction it takes during the middle of the film, which really kills the film for the most part. When it feels like the movie doesn’t even features the true final battle when it finishes, it starts to unravel the mess of a production that the movie was connected to. With that said, the performances, the quick to understand story and most of the fights are silly and fun enough that people can easily get into this movie. Clearly no one is going into this looking for a full-fledged movie, they want to see Bruce Lee being himself and doing what he does best, beating other people up, and with that logic, this film will deliver just that. A bland but harmless picture, if you love Bruce Lee, check it out and witness the martial arts legend for yourself.