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Presented as part of BIG PICTURE: A Century of Stories1h 42m / R / Action, Drama
VENUE: Historic Duncan Auditorium
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There’s not a scene in Enter the Dragon that hasn’t been copied a thousand times. On paper it’s a mish-mash of shallow plot and cartoonish characters: Bruce Lee plays Lee (why complicate things), a martial arts genius recruited by British intelligence to infiltrate a secretive combat tournament on a private island and take down Han (Shih Kien), the transparently evil mastermind behind it — and behind Lee’s sister’s murder. He quickly makes friends with a degenerate gambler played by character actor John Saxon (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Mitchell) and a slick, charismatic vet named Williams (future Blaxploitation star Jim Kelly). It’s structured as an Our-Man-Flint-level James Bond knock-off with the occasional philosophical aside from Lee. But who cares? Every frame of every fight deserves to be printed on a poster and hung on the walls of your childhood bedroom. You’re not here for tight plotting and naturalistic characters, you’re here for the saturated visuals, transcendent physicality and magnetic screen presence of Bruce Lee. In other words: don’t think, feel.
Tampa Theatre opened Enter the Dragon in 1973 and quickly realized we needed to lean into this phenomenon for all it was worth; we brought it back twice, once in 1974 and once in 1976, both in double bills. 1976 put it together with Hot Potato, a semi-forgotten loose follow-up to Black Belt Jones also starring Jim Kelly. But 1974 was the real action: Enter the Dragon on a double-bill with the Shaw Brothers classic and trailblazer for martial arts cinema in the US, Five Fingers of Death.
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Tampa Theatre, 707 N Franklin St, Tampa, FL 33602-4400, United States
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