ENTER THE DRAGON - DVD review

Before there were "Crouching Tigers" and Jet Li's, there was "Enter the Dragon" and Bruce Lee. I'm not sure if the movie was originally meant to be as tongue-in-cheek as it comes off today, but it's certainly as much fun as ever.

"Enter the Dragon" is notable for several reasons. For starters, this 1973 release was martial-artist superstar Bruce Lee's last completed film before his untimely death. Second, it was Lee's most financially successful film. Third, it is the movie most often credited with popularizing the kung-fu cinema craze; that is to say, without Lee we might not have had Jackie Chan, Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Yun-Fat Chow, Jet Li, and the rest. But most important, it's a darned good action yarn.

In other words, "Enter the Dragon" is not just a historical curiosity but a highly watchable and enjoyable commodity. It may not have the glamorous special effects of today's "Crouching Tiger" or "Kill Bill" epics, but Lee and his co-stars, John Saxon and Jim Kelly, more than make up for it in personal charisma (lots of it) and action sequences of balletic, if undeniably turbulent, grace.

Warner Bros. have issued "Enter the Dragon" at least four times now on DVD, first in a regular edition, then in a single-disc Twenty-fifth Anniversary Special Edition, then in a Twenty-fifth Anniversary Commemorative Edition, and now in this Two-Disc Special Edition. Each time, things get better, but the buyer must have to wonder where it will all end. This latest edition offers improved picture and sound and a slew of new bonus features. If that seems intriguing and you're a serious Bruce Lee fan, the set is worthwhile. If you've never bought the film on DVD before, I can't imagine it getting much better than this before high-definition arrives.

The plot is pretty flimsy, but the movie is not about plot. Lee, whose name in the film really is Lee, is asked to infiltrate a martial-arts tournament on the island fortress of an evildoer named Han (Shih Kien), a fellow at the head of a drug and slavery empire. Han is a renegade Shaolin monk who has disgraced his and Lee's temple with his heinous behaviour and whose men forced the suicide of Lee's sister, so Lee has a double motive for revenge. With the help of fellow tournament competitors Roper (John Saxon) and Williams (Jim Kelly, the 1971 international middleweight karate champion, looking like he stepped straight out of TV's "Mod Squad"), Lee beats up an army of bad guys and defeats the evil Han.

The acting is rather stiff, but there isn't a lot of need for acting when the action is so spectacular. I am not a big fan of kung-fu movies in general, but the fight sequences in this one are as compelling to watch as modern dance. The clothing and hairstyles date the picture, but that's of little concern; like the James Bond series, it's the riveting action and the beautiful settings (most of them shot on location in Hong Kong) that matter. More reflections of the Bond series, by the way, can be heard in the music of Lalo Schifrin and seen in the villain's artificial, Dr. No-like hand and his Blofeld white cat, while literal reflections of Orson Welles's "The Lady from Shanghai" can be seen in the climactic mirror scene.

Additionally, among the cast are Bob Wall as Han's dastardly bodyguard, O'Harra; Yang Sze as the monster martial artist, Bolo; Ahna Capri as Han's chief mistress, Tania; and Betty Chung as the beautiful secret agent, Mei Ling. Look, too, for brief, uncredited appearances by Keye Luke (of the old Charlie Chan series), Sammo Hung Kam-Bo, and Jackie Chan.

"Enter the Dragon" was also billed as "Long zheng hu dou," "The Deadly Three," and "Operation Dragon," take your pick. The movie received an R rating at the time of its release for some brief nudity and a good deal of punching and kicking. Today, I doubt it would rate more than a PG-13.

Bruce Lee stood 5' 7 1/2" and weighed 135 pounds. Yet, over three decades later he remains filmdom's premier martial artist. Makes all of us little guys proud.

Video:
When I reviewed the first Special Edition DVD of the movie a few years ago, I said it was, indeed, special. The approximately 2.13:1 widescreen ratio presented an anamorphic, color-corrected image that was as good as anything I'd seen from an older film. The colors hardly betrayed a hint of their age except in a certain degree of fade in some scenes. But times change and often for the better. The film has now been remastered at a higher bit rate, meaning less compression and more color and depth. Hues are more solid than ever, colors brighter, and definition very slightly sharper. The picture is really quite lovely to look at, perhaps a bit too dark in facial hues at times and accompanied by a very small amount of natural grain, but otherwise excellent. Also, the overall dimensions have been slightly reduced to about 2.10:1, and there are some minor line jitters, hardly noticeable.

Audio:
The original two-channel stereo sound was remastered in the previous edition for Dolby Digital 5.1 playback, and it, too, appears to have been remastered again for this new edition. Earlier, the sound betrayed its origins in a somewhat harsh, flat, nasal manner, but in its new trappings the sound has blossomed, opened up with an added smoothness, especially noticeable in the musical track. Understandably, rear-channel information continues to be restricted and channel separation is a tad limited compared to today's best sonic blockbusters, so don't expect "Master and Commander" here. While voices remain a tad hard and bright, clarity is fine, bass is prominent, and dynamics are more than adequate.

Extras:
As this is one of WB's new, special edition, two-disc sets, the extras are pretty extensive, much more so than on their previous, double-sided single disc. The first DVD contains the widescreen presentation of the film; the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack; twenty-nine scene selections; English and French language tracks; and English, French, and Spanish subtitles. In addition, there is an audio commentary with producer Paul Heller, who is not the most scintillating speaker of all time but provides some enlightening remembrances. Finally, there are several worthy documentaries. The first is "Blood and Steel: The Making of Enter the Dragon," thirty minutes long, made in 2003. The second is "Bruce Lee: In His Own Words," nineteen minutes, black-and-white, made in 1998. The third is a "Linda Lee Cadwell Interview Gallery," fifteen minutes of relatively new interviews. And the fourth and fifth are a vintage home movie, "Backyard Workout with Bruce Lee"; and a short, 1973 promotional featurette.

Disc two contains only a pair of documentaries, but they are fairly comprehensive. "Bruce Lee: The Curse of the Dragon," 1993, is eighty-seven minutes and twenty-five chapters long. Narrated by George Takei, the film tackles, among other things, the question of whether there is any connection between Lee's tragic death at age thirty-two and his son's mysterious death some twenty years later. The second documentary is "Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey," 2000, ninety-nine minutes and twenty-six chapters long. A lot of this second documentary is taken up with footage from Lee's unfinished production, "The Game of Death." The disc concludes with four theatrical trailers for "Enter the Dragon" and eight TV spots.

Parting Thoughts:
You might be a little wary of a studio like Warner Brothers reissuing this film so often, but I think this time they got it right. If you are not a fan of martial-arts films but feel you need one example of the genre in your film library, "Enter the Dragon" is probably your best choice. It's a first-class action movie in first-class style, presented in the best possible picture and sound obtainable on a standard DVD. Lee would have been happy.