Punch Man Punch Hard

Considering Bruce Lee’s first two films with Golden Harvest, The Big Boss and Fist of Fury, were filmed basically back-to-back, it does make a certain amount of sense that the two films have a lot in common. A lot of the same cast members are in both. They have similar concepts and similar stories. They are, effectively, two very closely related films even if, setting- and plot-wise, the two films are completely unrelated. And that does kind of make sense. These are two films working to establish Bruce Lee for audiences (outside of his role as sidekick Kato from The Green Hornet). They wanted to showcase him and give viewers an easy bar for entry. So two films that tell similar stories, about similar heroes, is an easy sell (especially once the first film comes out does really well for itself, to the tune of $50 Mil against a $100 K budget) for the studio.

Thus, with this second film, Fist of Fury (which isn’t a sequel to The Big Boss, as that film had two Fist of Fury sequels, one official and one not), we have another conflicted hero sworn to not battle the bad guys who then, of course, goes on a rampage battling the bad guys. There’s a girl he likes, there’s his friends giving him doubts and recriminations, and there’s a vaguely sketched bad guy that Lee’s character has to fight simply because there has to be an end boss for the climactic finale. While this film does have its own ideas, and was praised at the time for its political message, it does also have enough shared DNA that, all these years later, it feels very samey.

Lee this time around plays Chen Zhen, a student at a Chinese martial arts school in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. Chen had just come back to the schools to marry his sweetheart, Yuan Li'er (Nora Miao), but upon arriving at the school he finds out that his teacher, the head of the school, has died under mysterious circumstances. The police ruled it natural causes, but no one at the school believes that. Their suspicions only grow when, after the funeral, associates of the Japanese dojo in Hongkou District arrive, taunting the students over the death of their master, saying they’ll take any one of the students on and win. Chen wants to fight, but Yuan helps hold him back until the rivals leave.

However, Chen can’t help himself and he later goes to the dojo and beats up every single person there. When the master of that dojo, Hiroshi Suzuki (Riki Hashimoto), finds out what happened, he sends his men back over to beat the shit out of the Chinese school. They then demand that Chen be turned over to them or they’ll have the school shut down. Chen is convinced to flee the country instead, but when he learns that two of the students at the school were actually Japanese dojo members and they’d killed the school’s master under orders from Suzuki, he flips. He kills those two, and then starts working his way through the various members of the dojo, killing them one-by-one, and then in groups. The cops want Chen, the dojo wants Chen, and it’s up to Chen to find a way, somehow, to finally end this cycle of violence.

On the one hand, this film doesn’t feel that different, at a basic level, from The Big Boss. Chen (like Choa-an in that previous film) is a man who has been away but comes into town to discover that things aren’t quite what expected. He has a promise to not fight (this time the wish of his master) but eventually he has to break that promise when he finds a group of corrupt thugs that are bossing him and his people around. Then he starts going on a murderous spree, taking out everyone that offended him until (spoilers) he kills everyone right up to the final boss. Only then does he submit to authorities for his due punishment. You can take the plot of one film and slap it over the other and it feels like a tracing or a bas relief rubbing.

At the same time, though, it’s the shading of the film that sets this movie apart. While The Big Boss was a fairly standard film about a lone dude taking out criminals (which, actually, was a pretty common story in martial arts films of the era), this film finds its substance in the conflict between occupied China and imperialist Japan. The setting and characters of the film are based on a real historical incident that happened, specifically the death of Huo Yuanjia, leader of the Jingwu School in Shanghai. The film takes one of the more commonly accepted stories of the aftermath of his demise (it states, at least) to create the basis for its story.

Much of the plot surrounds the rivalry between the Japanese dojo and the Jingwu school. Because Jingwu is Chinese, the Japanese dojo feels they are inferior (that Japanese racism coming to the forefront), and at every turn they do what they can to shove the Chinese school around. This is illustrated by the fact that the dojo can call up the police to come and harass the Jingwu school, time and again, but whenever the Chinese students have a legitimate grievance, their case is pushed to the side to deal with the complaints of the Japanese school.

Hell, there’s even an extra scene put in where Chen tries to go into a Japanese district and is stopped by a guard who points to a sign that says “No Dogs and No Chinese,” only to then let a woman with a dog in. In the eyes of the guard, the Chinese man is more detestable than a dog. That scene clearly shows just when the conquering country thinks of the people they have invaded. It’s pretty damn cold but, from a historical perspective, actually accurate. That goes a long way towards showing the political state of this era that the film wanted to document.

Of course, the real reason why we’re here is to see Bruce Lee kick ass. Whatever political message the film has is valid, but the reason this movie was able to make $100 Mil on a $100 k budget (which is just an outstandingly ludicrous return on investment, to be sure) is because of the star and his fighting prowess. Like with The Big Boss the film takes its time getting to the good stuff, holding Lee’s Chen back until he can sneak off about twenty minutes in to go beat up an entire dojo. This sequence is pretty good (even if the direction of the film, and the cinematography, doesn’t quite hide the fakeness of the fighting and the hits well enough). But it’s the later battles between Chen and one or two foes that are absolutely great.

The last twenty minutes of the film sees Lee going through the dojo one last time, mopping up students, teachers, and the head of the dojo in one long series of brawls. The best fight is certainly Lee’s Chen going up against Russian mobster Petrov, played by Robert Baker in the film. Baker was a student of Lee’s Jeet Kune Do style and Lee himself recruited Baker for the role of Petrov. These two, both trained in the same style, were able to have one heck of a brawl (by 1970s cinematic standards) and this is the fight that feels the most bone-crunchingly authentic.

Honestly, of the first two films Lee headlined, Fist of Fury is the better production. It’s a better showcase of his skill, with his fists and kicks flying with remarkable speed. It has a decent story that, when given historical context, does feel genuine and authentic. Sure, the actual events in the film are clearly fictionalized (I doubt the real person Chen is based on went around in various disguises, all of them obviously fake, to infiltrate the dojo and learn its secrets), but that doesn’t take away from the drama (or the fun) the film has. And given the improvement in quality overall from The Big Boss, it’s easy to see why this film was able to make twice that the previous production pulled in at the Box Office.

We’re only two films in and it’s already obvious why Lee was a star. He had charisma, he had fighting prowess, and he carried himself like a legend. Films like this are what put Lee on the map, and it’s already feeling like a treat to go through and see the rest of what he was a part of (although not any of the direct sequels to this film as New Fist of Fury, Fist of Fury II, Fist of Fury III, and Last Fist of Fury all starred actors other than Lee himself).