The hero dies at the begin­ning: Enter the Drag­on at 50

Bruce Lee died on July 20 1973 and Enter the Drag­on pre­miered in Los Ange­les a month lat­er. The con­trast was star­tling, the irony evi­dent: on screen, Lee looked more alive than any oth­er action star, and he was dead by the time of its première. 

Strange cir­cum­stances, but Enter the Drag­on is strange. It’s a poor­ly-shot kung-fu flick made on a bar­gain bud­get, star­ring a Chi­nese-Amer­i­can named Bruce Lee who’d found some fame in mediocre Hong Kong pro­duc­tions and gigged as a Hol­ly­wood kung-fu teacher while try­ing to become, in his words, ​“the first high­est paid Ori­en­tal super­star in the Unit­ed States.” Lee was pre­ced­ed in Hol­ly­wood by oth­er Asian actors – Anna May Wong, Sesue Hayakawa, Nan­cy Kwan, etc. – but Lee was the first Asian actor to avoid being type­cast as vil­lain or fey­ish morsel. He was treat­ed like some­one cool. Cool­er than Connery’s Bond, cool­er than McQueen’s Cap­tain Hilts, cool­er than Elvis in any of his roles, which is anoth­er way of say­ing that Bruce Lee was the first Asian actor that Hol­ly­wood pre­sent­ed as a noneth­nic sex sym­bol. Lee’s con­tem­po­raries were Bran­do, McQueen, Mar­i­lyn, Elvis: film icons as bed­room fan­tasies. In 1973 Amer­i­can audi­ences added Bruce Lee to the list. 

In Enter the Drag­on, Bruce Lee plays the apt­ly-named ​“Lee”, a plain­clothes Shaolin monk moon­light­ing as an inter­na­tion­al secret agent. Lee is hired by a British secu­ri­ty agency to infil­trate a mixed mar­tial arts tour­na­ment run by ​“Mr. Han”, a dis­graced Shaolin monk who installed him­self as lord of a small island, got him­self a big, board-break­ing body­guard named ​“O’Hara”, and entered the sex-and-hero­in traf­fick­ing busi­ness. In clas­sic movie hero style, Lee does much more than he’s asked: he not only infil­trates the tour­na­ment and secures evi­dence of the sex-and-hero­in traf­fick­ing busi­ness, but he also dis­patch­es O’Hara, beats the hell out of dozens of lack­eys, and kills Mr. Han by kick­ing him onto a spear. 

This is stan­dard action movie stuff for mod­ern audi­ences, a tem­plate that com­bines the geopo­lit­i­cal intrigue of James Bond with a shirt­less phys­i­cal­i­ty lat­er copied by the likes of Stal­lone and Schwarzeneg­ger. But unlike Bond there’s no love scene for Lee. The chore­o­graphed fight­ing is the love scene, or maybe the chore­o­graphed fight­ing is the danc­ing is the love scene. Pauline Kael com­pared Bruce Lee to Fred Astaire; I think the com­par­i­son works bet­ter with Rudolf Nureyev. Astaire had a besuit­ed, play­ful grace, while Nureyev was shirt­less, dra­mat­ic, and mus­cu­lar. Astaire moved with ath­let­ic mod­esty, while Lee’s bravu­ra dom­i­nat­ed the screen. 

This bravu­ra is most evi­dent in Enter the Dragon’s strangest sequence, when Lee fights O’Hara. Ear­li­er in the movie, Lee learns that his sister’s death was O’Hara’s fault — the big body­guard tried to rape her but she com­mit­ted sui­cide before the act — and we expect Lee to get his revenge. Instead, he toys with O’Hara. He humil­i­ates him before knock­ing him out. Revenge of a kind, not the revenge we’re expect­ing, maybe not even the revenge Lee was expect­ing, until O’Hara regains con­scious­ness and tries to stab Lee with a bro­ken bot­tle. Lee kicks him down, then leaps into the air and lands on O’Hara’s chest. We hear the crunch of bone and we get a slow-motion close­up of Lee’s face, whose mouth is now wide open in a scream. He seems hor­ri­fied, con­fused, on the verge of tears. He seems to real­ize that although he got the revenge we were all expect­ing, his sis­ter is still dead, which makes Lee the first, and pos­si­bly only, action star to suf­fer through an exis­ten­tial cri­sis in the midst of a fight. 

A sim­i­lar motif returns lat­er in the movie, when Lee seizes one of Han’s many lack­eys, played by a young Jack­ie Chan. Lee has the lack­ey by the hair, the cam­era zooms in tight on Lee’s face, and we expect a repeat per­for­mance: the slow-motion hor­ror, the verge of tears, anoth­er exis­ten­tial cri­sis. But befit­ting the strange­ness of the movie, this time Lee breaks the lackey’s neck with glee. The vio­lence is swift. Lee’s expres­sion is almost orgas­mic — he likes to be watched. 

Steve McQueen was one of Bruce Lee’s kung-fu stu­dents. Bruce want­ed to make a movie with him, but he said no. Steve McQueen could be bor­ing in his per­for­mances, his lacon­ic charm often descend­ing into half-lid­ded dis­en­gage­ment, but he under­stood how to seduce. Unlike Lee, McQueen gave the illu­sion of phys­i­cal­i­ty while not mov­ing at all – his most abid­ing action sequence has him dri­ving a car. 

Con­trast McQueen’s act­ing strat­e­gy with Lee’s ear­li­er work in those mediocre Hong Kong pro­duc­tions. Before Enter the Drag­on, Bruce was a nascent sex sym­bol, not yet cool, still try­ing to con­vince the audi­ence that he was wor­thy of their atten­tion. His per­for­mances were corny, exag­ger­at­ed in that clas­sic Hong Kong the­atri­cal style. McQueen showed Lee how to make the audi­ence into the voyeur. All film icons like to be watched but the best ones are able to con­ceal that fact. 

In the words of Matthew Pol­ly, author of ​“Bruce Lee: A Life:”: 

“McQueen taught Bruce how to be cool. Bruce was already pret­ty cool – cool for Hong Kong or Seat­tle – but McQueen took him to Hol­ly­wood-lev­el cool. It is one of the rea­sons why when Bruce went back to Hong Kong, he blew peo­ple away, because he had a strut they had nev­er seen before.”

McQueen’s influ­ence is there but Bruce made it his own. Bruce didn’t suc­ceed as an actor because of McQueen – he absorbed what was use­ful and dis­card­ed what wasn’t. He took the cool­ness and con­trast­ed it with inten­si­ty, a flash of his own vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, and gave it dynam­ic range. Bruce is a bet­ter actor than McQueen. We see Bruce’s artis­tic mat­u­ra­tion occur in real-time, dur­ing Enter the Drag­on. He begins as that Chi­nese-Amer­i­can actor stuck in mediocre Hong Kong pro­duc­tions and emerges as the coolest sex sym­bol audi­ences had ever seen, maybe one of the bet­ter dancers, cer­tain­ly a bed­room fan­ta­sy who tran­scend­ed stereotype. 

Fifty years is ancient in cin­e­mat­ic terms but icons exist out­side of time. They are immor­tal, for­ev­er wait­ing to be watched. Watch Enter the Drag­on and wit­ness Bruce Lee’s mat­u­ra­tion. Watch him become the biggest action star in the world, in a poor­ly-shot kung-fu flick where the hero sur­vives a big body­guard, dozens of lack­eys, and an exis­ten­tial cri­sis. Watch him join the list of Hollywood’s icon­ic sex sym­bols. Bruce Lee the per­son died fifty years ago; Bruce Lee the actor remains very much alive.