Bruce Lee storms Bombay once again with Return Of The Dragon
It is like yesterday once more. After four years, Bruce Lee, the dragon, is storming Bombay once again. In 1975 when Enter The Dragon, the first Bruce Lee film was released at the New Excelsior in Bombay it had a packed 32-week run.
It is like yesterday once more. After four years, Bruce Lee, the dragon, is storming Bombay once again. In 1975 whenEnter The Dragon, the first Bruce Lee film was released at the New Excelsior in Bombay it had a packed 32-week run. Now,Return Of The Dragon, also written and directed by Bruce Lee, is on its way to improving the record - with the added advantage of a U certificate.Enter The Dragon was restricted by the Censor Boards' killjoys to "adults only".
In the case of Return Of The Dragon, all the four shows for the first eight weeks were a sell-out, despite a prolonged power-cut that turned the city's theatres into veritable furnaces. The collections per day amount to a neat Rs 21,500 and outside the theatre the black marketeers too are doing roaring business. A single ticket priced at Rs 5 can fetch thrice the rate (if you're lucky) in the blackmarket. Initially, the figure was even higher when a single ticket fetched Rs 40 to Rs 50.
was released in the West in 1975, shortly after Lee's death. A study in flash, the film accommodates all the trappings of the typical Hong Kong movie. There are shadow bouts, show-downs, rooftop chases, a bit of comedy, an angelic heroine in distress and a gang of grotesque villains.
Technically, the film just manages to be adequate. If the camerawork is rough and the editing jumpy, it hardly matters. The piece de resistance is to be found in the fight scenes and in the climax, a test of kung-fu skill between Lee and Chuck Norris, of the United States, a seven-time champ in the martial art.
Teenage Stuff: The story-line is wafer-thin and deals with a young man who arrives in Rome to save a chop-suey restaurant from take-over by the local mafiosi. It is pure comic-book stuff and serves mainly as a platform for a pyrotechnical display of karate, savate, judo and Chinese boxing by Lee.
The action is almost like a ballet and celebrates the power of a strong, well-disciplined body. The appeal is directly to teenagers and the under-30s, and no wonder that many canteen boys as well as the snotty, bubble-gum crowd in Bombay are wearing Bruce Lee T-shirts or tacking up pin-ups on the wall.
A paperback, The Man Only I Knew, written by Bruce Lee's wife Linda is selling briskly at the bookshops. Besides, schools providing training in the art of self-defence have suddenly multiplied in the city.