REVIEW: ‘The Big Boss’ (1971)

THE BIG BOSS (aka FISTS OF FURY) was Bruce Lee’s debut film, or rather his first martial arts film. He had actually appeared as a child actor in a number of Hong Kong films before he relocated to America.

Already popular in Asia for his role on the television series THE GREEN HORNET, Lee exploded on the scene with this violent Lo Wei film and set the framework for his image as the world’s first and most popular martial arts film star. However, both Jimmy Wang Yu and Lo Lieh deserve credit for preceding Lee in introducing audiences to what would become the new kung fu movie genre, respectively with Hong Kong’s first “modern” kung fu movie THE CHINESE BOXER and KING BOXER, which hit U.S. shores as FIVE FINGERS OF DEATH, shortly before Lee’s FIST OF FURY floored American audiences.

Judged on its own merits, this simplistic tale of a man fighting to avenge the death of his co-workers at the hands of their criminal boss is nothing remarkable. The fight choreography ranks below what you’ll find in Lee’s subsequent films and hardly stands up to the kind of elaborate workouts seen in Golden Harvest’s late ’70s classics of kung fu. Aside from one brief scene, Lee doesn’t even fight for approximately the first 40 minutes.

The film also follows the trends of the day by exposing a fair amount of exploitive content such as Ma La Lene’s knockers and a now infamous and hard-to-find scene where Lee shoves a large saw blade into a man’s skull. But then, Lee’s films were really about one thing, Bruce Lee and his smoldering personality. He was an icon who made a film his, regardless of how bad any of the content was.

In the film, Lee initially takes a back seat to James Tien, an established Hong Kong star with adequate martial arts skills. He would co-star with Lee again in FIST OF FURY (1972), but was able to have a slightly more commanding presence here since Lee was the newcomer. Tien plays Chen, a worker at an ice factory who helps Cheng (Bruce Lee) get hired there. Two random fights take place with Chen stepping up to be the hero while Cheng looks on.

On Cheng’s first day at the factory, he mistaken drops a block of ice on the floor and two workers find a suspicious package inside. The two workers are brought before the boss and basically told to take a sum of money and keep their mouths shut about turns out to be drugs smuggled in the ice. Not only are they naïve enough to not recognize a drug smuggling operation in the first place, but once they do they don’t consider the consequences of refusing the money. They are killed and Cheng, who acts as the leader of the workers meets with the boss to find out what happened to them.

Hong Kong film fans with recognize a young Lam Ching-ying as James Tien’s partner. The two meet with the same fate, but after a fierce struggle. Suspecting their manger of foul play over the disappearance of their co-workers, the remaining factory workers riot and Cheng gets sucked into the fray despite his promise to his mother to never fight again. Of course, Cheng knocks the stuffing out of the factory foreman and his goons. In a move to stave off further dissent, the boss promotes Cheng to foreman and bribes him with women and wealth, much to the chagrin of Maria Yi who plays his would be girlfriend. A rift also grows between Cheng and the workers who feel betrayed.

Then Cheng is warned about the true nature of the boss by a prostitute (Ma La Lene) and finds his missing friends have been put on ice, literally. Already alerted, the boss’s thugs kill more workers and attack Cheng at the factory. Bloodied but still alive, Cheng confronts the boss at his palatial home.

Truly, the only credible reasons to watch this film is for the fights and simply to see Bruce Lee. So any further discussion about the flawed story filled with generalities and plot holes would be a waste of time. Most of the trademark elements of Lee’s later films are present here. He tastes his blood from a fresh wound, gets a superficial cut to the stomach, he frowns, smirks, and emits an incredible intensity leading up to his fights. The only things missing are the nunchaku and a worthy opponent.

I mean no disrespect to Han Ying-chieh, who plays the boss and Lee’s final opponent. He was the credited action director on the film and contributed to a number of excellent films in the genre including A TOUCH OF ZEN (1971) and BACK ALLEY PRINCESS (1973) with Polly Kuan. Han is also a fine character actor and kung fu proponent, but he’s simply no match for Lee onscreen and this should be apparent to anyone who sees them tangle. Part of this reason may be due to a variance in styles, but Lee’s speed and power is undeniable. He’s in a completely different class. Nevertheless, Lee’s final move which involves impaling Han with his fingers is morbidly satisfying. Too bad it’s been cut from UK releases.

The best fight actually takes place in the ice factory and has Lee using various props and tools lying about. It’s a memorable fight, made all the more so by a comical shot of Bruce slamming a thug through the factory wall, leaving a hole that perfectly matches the shape of his body.

THE BIG BOSS could be described as the lesser of Lee’s films, although I personally prefer it over ENTER THE DRAGON, which cost a lot more, but was even more inconceivable. The rough, low budget feel of the film enhances Lee’s performance and his raw intensity seems to be at home in this environment.

On the audio front, the Cantonese track features sampled music from the likes of Pink Floyd, but works reasonably well. Lee’s trademark howling is off and doesn’t necessarily match what’s happening on screen. But Bruce Lee fans generally won’t care too much about all of these niggling gripes. Like everything he did, it’s worth watching just to bask in the fierce glow of his charisma.