Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger (1976)

Must See Movie...

hyped garbage

Beautiful, moving film.

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

Bruce Lee is dead and there must be foul play, there must! How can a movie like this not fail? It must fail. There is no way to make a winner out of this. Instead of action and martial arts we start with people who can do action and martial arts (not act) trying to act, trying to create suspense, mystery, and solve a crime. That must fail. The all talk and no action goes on for 23 minutes before there is a poorly choreographed and filmed fight in the dark. The one thing that could make the movie interesting takes 23 minutes to get to and then flops. This pattern continues until the end. Thanks to the fast forward button I watched the entire movie – with a run time of one hour and eighteen minutes in about thirty minutes. This is the preferred method to watch this movie. I found it almost entertaining that way and rate it a generous four out of ten but only at 2x or 4x speed.

Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger (1976) ** (out of 4)David Lee (Bruce Li) goes to visit Bruce Lee on the set of ENTER THE DRAGON when Lee tells him about some strange phone calls. Later that evening David learns that his friend is dead so he sets out to find out who murdered him.When Bruce Lee died there were countless conspiracy theories as to what really happened. Very few people believed the official report simple because it was hard to believe that someone as young and healthy like Lee could die that way. The death of Lee also caused an entire sub-genre of the Martial Arts flick, which some call leeploitation. This film here isn't nearly as horrible as some make it out to be but you can see how fans or family of the real Bruce Lee might be extremely offended by it. The exploitation level here is pretty strong including them using real funeral footage to show Lee's death here.Some of the conspiracy theories out there are mildly interesting but this cheap Hong Kong movie doesn't try to tell a good story. In fact, there's very little actual plot here outside of someone killed Lee and it's up to the friend to find out who. None of it ever makes too much sense and I'd argue that the producers weren't really interested in telling a real conspiracy theory. Instead this here is just an excuse to exploit Lee's name but we certainly know this wasn't the only one.For the most part I found the film slightly entertaining but it certainly helped that it didn't overstay it's welcome as the running time is rather short and the film has a fairly good flow to it. On a technical level the movie is quite bad with some silly performances, laughable dramatic scenes and some incredibly awful editing. The editing here is beyond bad and especially during the final fight sequence. The main attraction to this genre is watching the kung fu and I will admit that the fight scenes here were entertaining. They're certainly not in the same level as a real Bruce Lee movie but they're fun. Li, one of the biggest imitators, is good here as well.EXIT THE DRAGON, ENTER THE TIGER isn't a film to take too serious. Even the offensive exploitation of Lee probably shouldn't be taken overly serious but if you're a fan of the genre there are certainly much worse out there.

I don't blame the lesser denizens of the Hong Kong film industry for trying to make a buck when the biggest breakout sensation of that industry (probably ever) suddenly died and the industry lost its biggest marquee draw. But really, this is a little too much in terms of exploitation. Bruce Lee was a man,not just a celebrity, and his reputation (and his family and friends) deserved better than the bunch of pretenders who wanted to cash in on the tragedy of his death. If someone had tried to exploit the death a friend of Bruce Lee like this, he would have probably punched them in the face. But if you can get past the ham-handed sanctimonious cheese of the first few minutes, the film isn't all that bad. Some of the fight scenes are obviously a tribute to the source - the "Tiger" fights a giant, a gymnast in a yellow track suit(!) and a whole bunch of familiar looking "gangsters" (I recognized actor/stunt man An Ping from a string of early Shaw Brothers films before he was kicked off a roof top) multiple times, etc. And the final big fight/showdown with "the Big Boss" (yes, that's a Bruce Lee in-joke) actually is pretty good.The trouble is that the story and the direction and the fight choreography are hopelessly stale and unoriginal and derivative.No one here has access to the larger-than-life qualities Bruce was able to bring to the screen. So having the nerve to compare their efforts to something like "Fists Of Fury" makes the actors and action look even more trivial and 2nd rate than they would on their own. Bruce's presence (and some suitably archetypal skillful scripting) turned his four feature films into epics of adventure, honor, revenge, tragedy and heroism.In contrast, all a film like this is about is the "hero" beating up a bunch of guys. Penalized a couple of stars for the opening moments which exploit the stock footage of Lee's funeral, but gets those two stars back as a bonus for having an English dub that doesn't make my ears bleed.

This is just another example of someone trying to make a quick buck off of the death of a legend. This film basically is about a supposed disciple of Bruce Lee named David hunting for the people who allegedly murdered his mentor (for the record, his official cause of death was listed as a cerebral edema). However, all this film does is exploit the death of Bruce Lee and all the theories surrounding the sudden death of perhaps the greatest ambassador for the martial arts. Why couldn't they just let the man rest in peace? Sure he died at a young age, but there probably was nothing sinister about it. However, the main problem I have with it is the fact that they tried to pass off a "Bruce Lee" wannabee off as the genuine article. This made this film more of a rip off than it already was. I hope that the person who made this garbage feels real good about the way he tarnished a true legend of the screen.