Enter the Dragon may be Bruce Lee’s most famous film, but the definitive Bruce Lee film is actually The Way of the Dragon. Before making Enter the Dragon in Hollywood, the martial arts icon starred in The Way of the Dragon, which became his third film at the Hong Kong kung fu movie studio, Golden Harvest. Though Enter the Dragon is commonly regarded as the actor’s best movie, The Way of the Dragon is the quintessential Bruce Lee experience.
Set in Rome, Way of the Dragon sent Bruce Lee’s Tang Lung to a Chinese restaurant whose workers were being harassed by a gang of thugs. Tang’s mission was to deal with the bullies, but the people he was expected to help believed him to be incompetent. As soon as they saw Tang put his kung fu skills into action, they gained a new level of confidence in his abilities. After several failed attempts to get rid of Tang Lung, the criminal gang hired a karate expert from the West, played by Chuck Norris, to challenge him.
Comparing the two movies, The Way of the Dragon is the better representation of the Bruce Lee gestalt. Enter the Dragon was a Hollywood movie directed by Robert Clouse and written by Michael Allin, whereas The Way of the Dragon was both directed and written by Lee himself. This important distinction means that the latter contained more of Bruce Lee’s spirit and style than the former. In the case of Enter the Dragon, Lee's direction was largely limited to just the fight scenes, but with The Way of the Dragon, he had total creative control over everything, allowing him to do things that he never had the opportunity to do in his first three kung fu movies. Having this level of control made it possible for Lee to use The Way of the Dragon to properly showcase his talents. He also put the spotlight on himself, which is quite different from how Enter the Dragon splits its focus between three protagonists.
The Way of the Dragon reflects Lee's narrative preferences as well, such as his use of humor. Bruce Lee movies are typically serious in tone, but The Way of the Dragon has plenty of unexpected, comedic moments, such as when Tang Lung has to go to the bathroom at the worst possible times. There’s also the matter of the camera work, which consists of some interesting shots, including when the final battle continuously cuts to a kitten. His approach to humor as well as the cinematography lets audiences get a real taste of Lee’s style as a filmmaker. Lee knew how to entertain without relying just on martial arts.
One of the best decisions that Lee made for The Way of the Dragon was the casting of Chuck Norris as the villain. Lee understood that since Norris was an accomplished martial artist in his own right, that he would able to craft a memorable fight scene. And that’s exactly what happened. Fights between a kung fu expert and an untrained actor is always limiting when it comes to the martial arts choreography, but The Way of the Dragon’s battle in the Colosseum doesn’t suffer from that. The blows exchanged between Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris look real and visceral. What occurred between the two actors has gone down in martial arts movie history as one of the greatest fight scenes of all time — and for good reason. No kung fu movie is complete without an epic final showdown, and on that point, The Way of the Dragon does more than deliver.