I first saw this in the late 80s on a vhs. Then again in the early 2k on a dvd which I own.

Revisited it recently.

This one has terrific fight sequences n much better ones than The Big Boss n Way of the Dragon.

This one starts off slow but the last half an hour has all the best fights back to back.

The fight in the Japanese garden stayed with me since i was a kid. The juxtaposition of the serene n soothing garden n the violent kicks n punches between Lee n the Russian fighter is amazingly shot.

The plot - Chen Zhen (Lee) returns to his village in the hope of marrying his sweetheart but is devastated upon knowing that his teacher has passed away. Chen Zhen controls himself in-spite of encountering various insults towards his teacher by the Japanese students inside his Alma mater but later he winds up fighting the Japanese students, defeating all of them, including their sensei, single-handedly inside the Japanese dojo. Later other Japanese students retaliate by attacking Chen Zhen's Alma mater on their boss' (Suzuki) orders. Chen Zhen tries to lay low but gets very furious after discovering that his teacher was poisoned by Suzuki, the boss of the Japanese dojo.

We have Ying-Chieh Han (the guy who played the main villain/big boss in The Big Boss).

He is in a very small role of that of a steward known as Feng.

When the Japanese mob/police shoots in the end at Bruce Lee's character while he leaps forward, won't the bullets hit few people who are behind Lee's character?

This review is based on the English-dubbed version of JING WU MEN. Unfortunately, during the 1970s, many kung-fu movies were horribly dubbed into English--with voices that didn't sound the least bit Asian or appropriate to the characters. In addition, the sound effects were WAY over the top--with the loudest crunching sounds you'll ever hear in a film! While I don't mind the super-loud slapping and crunching sounds, I hated the dubbing and really wish the movie had been presented in its original form with subtitles. Now I am sure some insanely biased fans of Bruce Lee will think I am attacking him or trashing the movie. On the contrary, I am attacking the ham-fisted way foreigners butchered the film and showed little regard for the material. This was all part of a three DVD set from St. Clair Video entitled "Samurai Collection"--though few of the films had anything to do with samurai--most were kung-fu movies (kung-fu is a style of marital arts, whereas a samurai is a Japanese version of a knight).

The film itself is entertaining and needs a bit of historical background to help the viewer to understand what is happening. In the 19th and 20th century, China was a very weak nation with a string of inept leaders. As a result, greedy nations of Europe began forcing their way into the country and carved up this large nation into "foreign zones" which were basically colonies within China. The most famous of these was Hong Kong, though the film is set in Shanghai. A bit later, the US and Japan also got involved in this colonialism and the Japanese dominating and taking advantage of the Chinese is the setting for the film. It is set in the early 20th century and the film plays up the natural hatred of the Japanese among the Chinese (for more information, try googling "Nanking"). In this case, a group of evil Japanese Karate experts (they are mistranslated as "samurai") and their dojo come to beat up the nice local kung-fu practitioners. They start by poisoning the leader of the Chinese school and then begin beating the crap out of the nice Chinese. The only one to stand up to them and fight back is Bruce Lee.

As for the rest of the film, it's almost non-stop action and it's truly amazing to see Lee fight so fast. Unfortunately, though the choreography isn't what it was in later films--even later Lee films. It's a lot of super-fast punching and kicking. Vey impressive, yes--but appearing very spontaneous and less "cool" as later kung-fu videos. For example, although Jackie Chan seems to be less fast or insane when he fights (definite pluses for Lee),he uses props very well and his fights are more visually impressive because of this. Still, Lee is the "grand-daddy" of all martial artists and it's an entertaining film if you can find a subtitled copy---if it exists.

FYI--Since this movie is set in the 20th century, most people who watch this film MUST be thinking "why don't they just shoot him and end this fighting machine once and for all?!". I know I sure did!

Lo Wei's FIST OF FURY is yet another strong, action-fuelled odyssey of danger, treachery, rivalry, and hatred from Bruce Lee, the undisputed king of kung fu cinema who once again gets an opportunity to display the reasons that he is still, even now forty years later, considered to be the best of the best when it comes to martial arts. Drawing on many inspirations, from spaghetti westerns to war films and even romance, the movie satisfies on a number of levels and not least with the violence-fuelled plot which makes ultimate use of the intense hatred of the Japanese by the Chinese (and vice-versa). This time around, Bruce plays a deeply flawed hero who simply cannot control his anger when confronted by a Japanese school who may or may not have had his beloved master killed. In order to satisfy his deep-burning lust for revenge, Bruce goes on a one-man mission of revenge and justice, as the police close in on him and his former comrades lose hope.

Lo Wei's movie is well-directed and it goes without saying that the fights are very well choreographed, especially towards the end of the movie. Although the transfer I saw was badly cropped, many of the fight sequences are still highly impressive, showing a more human but no less indestructible side of Bruce. The finale, in which he invades the Japanese camp and takes on a massive Russian fighter, is great stuff and martial arts at its finest.

The rest of the film is a mixed bag, containing heavy helpings of social comment, drama and a close examination of the situation in which the helpless characters find themselves. In a way, all of the participants have no control over what they do and so watching the inevitable tragedy play out is often gripping stuff. Although the victim of another bad dubbing job, the often strong acting shines through from the likes of Nora Miao, James Tien, and of course Bruce himself. Thus, both Lee fans and fans of the action genre in general should find much to be enjoyed in this powerful, very human drama which uses the fight scenes as a result of the plot rather than the other way round (as is often the flaw with most cheap kung fu movies). Jet Li's 1994 film FIST OF LEGEND is a very different - but no less impressive - version of the same story.