peteg's blog - noise - movies - 2024 04 08 FistOfFury

Fist of Fury (1972)

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Bruce Lee's second feature where he's in the lead. Learning from the first one there is some attempt at creating a mythos: we're taken to 1900s Shanghai, to the international settlement which is under strict Japanese influence, where someone has the great idea of killing Bruce's teacher. The inevitable ensues.

The version I saw was dubbed with terribly plummy English accents. Bruce just doesn't sound like that! Perhaps the idea was that this major flaw would hide all the other major (or even bigger?) flaws. The plot is overwrought and illogical. There's way too much exposition and too many scenes that progress nothing. Things sagged every time Bruce is off the screen, which was far too often. On the plus side he's a bit of a clothes horse: I liked the white suit he turns up in.

An excess of information at Wikipedia. Jackie Chan is supposedly in there somewhere. Dubbed into Noongar in 2021! Wow. Chairman Mao watched it three times!