Bruce Lee was riding high when he directed his first feature The Way of the Dragon. The former Hong Kong child star turned US-based martial arts expert and actor had returned to the colony and immediately caused a sensation with first The Big Boss (1971) and then Fist of Fury (1972). The two films, directed by Lo Wei, seized on Lee’s incredible skill set of lightning reflexes, precision moves and a confident demeanour that could flip from amiable everyman to muscular superman in a flash.
Lee, who’d already been involved in action directing for those two films and earlier works in the States, was itching to direct his own work. With a new production company formed by him and Golden Harvest studio head Raymond Chow, Lee sought to lift the standards of Hong Kong cinema up a few rungs with the ambitious Italian-set The Way of the Dragon. And the achievement paid off, with Lee’s directorial debut eventually setting a Hong Kong cinema box office record on its release at the end of 1972.
Audiences first meet Lee’s character Tang Lung when he arrives at Rome airport, famished and only able to speak Cantonese. He’s a Hong Kong country boy who’s been sent to Italy to help out a friend’s relative, whose Chinese restaurant has been targeted for acquisition by a syndicate. After reaching the diner, Tang keeps his abilities largely under wraps, but it’s not long before the bad guys turn up, force his hand and spark a brawl in an alleyway.
Tang’s retaliation doesn’t go down well with the syndicate’s boss (Jon Benn), who responds by hiring fighters from abroad to lay waste to Tang and seize the restaurant. But when initial fights involving foreign fighters (Robert Wall and Hwang In-shik) bring no results, top American martial artist Colt (Chuck Norris) is called in as a match for Tang’s formidable skills.
Throughout his picture, Lee marks himself out as a capable hand in the director’s role. Spectacular martial arts aside, The Way of the Dragon shows a deft comic touch, lifting the film’s feel-good factor to offset much darker turns. Lee’s comic approach runs from physical comedy when the hapless bumpkin struggles to order food to sly Hong Kong-style jokes, with Lee calling some Roman ruins a slum with awesome redevelopment potential.
After a series of battles that steadily up the ante on the martial arts front, The Way of the Dragon’s centrepiece is a closing showdown in Rome’s Coliseum – a scene as iconic as the mirror hall finale of Lee’s subsequent Enter the Dragon. The direction captures Lee in a supremely flattering light – his rippling physique and light-footed movement are on full display in warm-up scenes and appear in contrast to Norris’ brawny look – but also approaches the scene from the perspective of an insider, eager to reflect martial arts philosophy hinted at in earlier scenes and showing how two masters would engage in a fight. The one-on-one with Norris develops carefully, with the fighters first limbering up at length, then evaluating each other between early bouts and ultimately engaging in fierce clash with a certain respect for each other.
The Way of the Dragon was the only feature Lee could complete as a director, as he died just seven months after the film’s release and left another directing project unfinished. Given The Way of the Dragon’s confident blend of easy entertainment and complex action, Lee’s achievements and raw talent as both martial artist and filmmaker are abundantly clear. A slew of imitators would follow in Lee’s wake, but it would be years before another martial arts talent could win big with the moviegoing masses in Hong Kong and further afield.