Bruce Lee’s only directed feature is an amusing actioner with cartoony characters, an ultra-thin plot and pacing issues, culminating in one of the most iconic showdowns in martial arts cinema. 

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Just like Enter the Dragon (1973), The Way of the Dragon suffers from pacing issues.  It is nowhere as evident as in the movie’s first fifteen minutes where we see Bruce Lee desperately needing to go to the loo after having too much tummy-bloating soup in an airport restaurant. 

It’s played for comic effect and does set the tone of this amusing actioner, but my goodness, the script needs a few more drafts of polishing.  If the entire movie feels somewhat lethargic, it is Lee’s action scenes that bring it back to life. 

Here, he plays Tang Lung, who is summoned from Hong Kong to Rome to help a restaurateur protect his business from annoying thugs whose boss wants to buy the land where it stands. 

The only feature directed by Lee himself, The Way of the Dragon is, of course, a significant entry in the cult icon’s small but eternally discursive body of work, not least because it features one of the all-time showdowns between two skilled martial artists—Lee vs. Chuck Norris. 

“Don’t worry. We have a dragon on our side.”

And since they are in Rome, why not throw kicks and punches in the Colosseum, with a random cat as a spectator? 

While Lee’s comic chops are at best tolerable, it is his sharp, agile physicality and raw unarmed combat skills that continue to enthral audiences.  Such are the film’s cartoony characters and ultra-thin plot that these extended moments of action become the ‘meat’ and why we watch these movies in the first place. 

We are drawn to the attraction that is the stupendous artist-performer (I was also drawn to Nora Miao’s cute, pouty face); everything else is excess.     

Grade: B-

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