They say that a star that burns twice as bright only burns half as long and if that is truly the case, then Bruce Lee must have pumped out the wattage of a thousand suns. There were numerous tragedies that came to pass due to his shockingly untimely death, but surely ome of the most frustrating is that he was only able to leave three (and a bit) features in his wake which only really acted as a taste of what the limber legend could have accomplished if fate had allowed him to stick around.
While Enter The Dragon is surely the most iconic of Lee’s movies, not much is said about his previous two movies, both made after a period of inaction after suffering the twin blows of the cancellation of The Green Hornet and the recovery of a damaged sacral nerve in his seemingly inpenetrable back. After deciding on giving the Hong Kong film industry (on a suggestion by James Coburn, no less), Lee finally found himself starring in a movie – one that proved to be endearingly strange. Some parts of the world know it as Fists Of Fury, but those in the know recognize it under it’s more fitting title: The Big Boss.
Cheng Chao-an has relocated from China to Thailand to find work at a local ice factory and quickly bonds with his sizable adopted family. Shown the ropes and introduced to his virtual army of cousins by the nobel hearted Hsu Chien, Cheng is hired in no time, but unbeknownst to the workers, the fact that the factory looks like it has a terrifying health and safety record isn’t the only things that’ll threaten both their lives and their paychecks. It turns out that the big boss, a crafty businessman by the name of Hsiao Mi, is using the factory as a front for his drugs ring and is smuggling out bags of dope frozen within the hefty blocks of ice. When one of the blocks breaks one day and some of the questionable contraband tumbles out, it’s noticed by two of Cheng’s cousins who are quickly whisked away and offered a sizable chunk of cash to join the organisation. They respectfully decline and are disrespectfully murdered for their troubles, but their disappearance worries Hsu Chien, who starts asking around about their whereabouts. His investigation ends at the residence of Hsu Chien who chooses to protect his investment the way he seemingly protects everything else, by ordering a crowd of his underlings to decend on the problem with a shitload of knives and soon matters get way out of hand.
But where’s Cheng while all of this is going on? Well, to be honest, he’s standing around, doing a boatload of nothing for them most part as he has given his mother a vow that he will engage in no fighting while away, but after more of his relatives turn up missing, he finally renounces his promise and gets down to some serious game-breaking. However, still unaware that the ice factory is a front and that at least four of his cousins are currently stashed away in pieces, Cheng is promoted to head foreman in an effort to stem the buttkicking that his stinging fists and lightning feet can muster. Can he figure out this dastardly plot before more innocent family members are put on ice?
I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that my familiarity with Bruce Lee’s career barely stretched beyond the occasional viewing of Enter The Dragon until only fairly recently thanks to the pretence that his earlier outings were quite flat affairs. To put it bluntly, you can put some of the greatest feats of martial arts chicanery on screen, but if you stick them in a movie that’s actually fairly bland, it can nullify the overall effect. However, on the flip side, sometimes it pays to say “fuck the movie” and to watch the film to just saviour the sight of one of the genres most prominent icons punch a guy so hard he ploughs through a wall while leaving a thug-shaped outline like something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. I’m not exaggerating, this is something that actually happens.
Upon finslly putting aside my illogical, martial arts snobbery where it belongs (in the fucking trash), I found The Big Boss something of an intriguing watch as, while hardly wearing the mantle of greatest Kung-Fu film ever made, it interestingly breaks some unwritten rules before Lee breaks the sound barrier with a nerve-severing roundhouse. The first is that Bruce’s character doesn’t stick to the usual kind of hero criteria that more classic Kung-Fu movies (usually provided by the like of Shaw Brothers) would usually adhere to. Most kick-flinging white hats would either be immature, yet gifted, man-children, desperately in need of an attitude adjustment in order to win the final brawl; or they were chaste, master warriors of impossible character and virtue. Cheng, on the other hand, is a character who feels like he’s emerged from the realms of western exploitation movies as he’s interested in a paycheck more than inner peace and isn’t above getting smashed on rice wine and hopping into bed with the odd prostitute in order to blow off some steam. That’s not to say the man doesn’t have his morals – after all, his promise to his mother that he’d abstain from fighting means that literally 40 minutes goes by before he really involves himself in a fight.
It’s here that The Big Boss has trouble finding its footing as the movie keeps Lee and his blistering skills on a tight leash while it opts to have co-star and original choice for Cheng, James Tien, take the wheel for the first half of the movie as a far more conventional, Kung Fu lead. It’s not that Tien, a veteran of over 70 movies, is bad or anything, but once his well-meaning character is dispatched, it’s time for Lee to tag in and you can immediately feel the change in the air the moment he catches a stray punch during a brawl between the workers and the men Hsiao Mi has stationed there. From that point onwards, powered by Lee’s sizable charisma, The Big Boss shifts gears and, despite its cheesy nature, whups you into submission with piston-like fists and bone-juddering thrust kicks. Entering a sort of exploitation nirvana where Lee engages in brawls with dozens of people at a time and utilises everything from knives to saws in his bloody rampage of justice, the movie doesn’t get any smarter, or more polished (an altercation with a pack of attack dogs sees Bruce dodging canines that are literally being thrown at him off camera), but it sure is fun.
In fact, it’s a source of great amusement that, for all his formidable skills, Cheng barely manages to save a single person thanks to the script’s overzealous attempts to raise the stakes, however the ending, which sees Cheng essentially surrender himself over to the authorities for committing a one-man massacre, is actually absurdly bad-ass.
Weirdly profiteering from a gleefully trashy plot, The Big Boss comes equipped with a fail safe that comes along once in a lifetime as Lee’s presence alone elevates the material into something incredibly watchable. Is it a gripping revenge thriller? Are you kidding? Is it a magnificent showcase for the kind of damage Bruce Lee’s limbs were famous for? Absolutely. The Big Boss may contain the nutritional value of a knuckle sandwich, but thankfully it also provides the wallop.
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