Consider the plot: a rebel Shaolin monk abandons the teachings of his temple to, er, but a private island and run a drug and sex slavery operation under cover of martial arts contests while surrounded by loads of henchman. Yep, that’s a Bond villain all right. Plus, our hero is hired by a mysterious British chap called Braithwaite to infiltrate said Bond villain’s lair as a kind of spy. Yep, all very Bond film so far.
This is, of course, sort of a martial arts film too, but there are times you’d forget it wasn’t a Bond film that happened to have lots of martial arts in it. So much so that Lee and Braithwaite remind us early on that guns are banned from the film... er, island, because “any bloody fool can pull a trigger”.
Bruce Lee is a charismatic star, and the fighting scenes are obviously impressive. But the film is so good, in spite of the differences from the generally historical tenor of Lee’s other work, precisely because it successfully takes on the template of a Bond film. There are other nice touches too- we emphasise with Williams after the racism he experiences from cops in LA, who get their just desserts. The direction is very good, and the early sequences show off Hong Kong very well. This is a genuinely impressive film, and far from the sort of kitsch martial arts film you’d often get at the time.
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