Enter The Dragon (HD-DVD)
Picture:
B Sound: B- Extras: B- Film: B
There is
no doubt that Bruce Lee’s Enter The
Dragon (1973) would have been a hit, but after his still-disturbing death,
the hit became a megahit and is the peak of his promising career that would
never be. Fortunately, it remains far
above most of the Martial Arts Cycle films that were launched with the likes of
Five Fingers Of Death and continued
until the late 1970s when people finally got over the initial shock that Lee
was gone.
An
academy for Martial Arts is run by murderous opium lord Han (Kien Shih) whose
illegal business dealings go beyond drugs and the school is being used as a
front to legitimize the dealings.
Unfortunately, he kills one young lady whose brother Lee is played by
Lee and he wants revenge. The result is
a hardcore action film like no other.
Some of Lee’s greatest work and frankly the greatest work in action
cinema history happens here. This
includes his highly elevated combination of several martial arts that puts the
bullettime of Matrix-era Martial
Arts features in the dust.
Lee
choreographed all of the fights, all the way to Hun’s infamous tournament, a
high watermark in action cinema. It was
quickly duplicated, including in a spoofy scene form Guy Hamilton’s James Bond
film The Man With The Golden Gun a
year later. Among the cast is Jim Kelly,
who became a Martial Arts star of the time and all-time B-movie actor John
Saxon, who hit his stride at this time, including as memorable villains in hit
TV shows like The Six Million Dollar Man
(as the friend of Steve Austin replaced by a killer robot that inspired the
Maskatron action figure) and Wonder
Woman (the great WWII First Season where he invades Paradise Island on
behalf of the Nazis and Debra Winger debuts as Wonder Girl) pushing him
irresistibly into A territory. Though
Robert Clouse directed the film, it is Lee who is the true author of the fight
sequences and world cinema has been spending over 33 years since trying to
catch up. They have barely come close.
Then
there is Lee, one of the great icons of the 20th century, in and out
of cinema. It is always with sad irony
that one watches this film, seeing one of the great stars of all time at the
peak of his power. The camera loved Lee
and he knew how to give it his all, something his son Brandon inherited to a
great extent before tragedy struck him.
Lee knew his audience and knew people loved to watch because he was so
groundbreaking, what he was doing was way ahead of its time and like nothing
that had ever been seen before or since.
He loved what he did and his skills were only matched by his charisma
and energy. Enter The Dragon captures this energy like only big screen
filmmaking could and remains immensely popular decades later and will endure
for many more. No wonder Warner picked
it as one of their first classic HD-DVD titles.
Anything less would have been a missed opportunity.
We have
had to suffer through so many substandard versions of this film that even the
standard DVD has issues, but this 2.35 X 1 1080p digital High Definition image
drop kicks all previous versions to the side.
There are some signs of older film stock grain and age in parts, but the
color richness, depth, fullness ands even detail are some of the best in either
HD format so far. Shot in real
anamorphic Panavision by Gilbert Hubbs and the use of color is exceptional,
processed in three-strip (IB) dye-transfer Technicolor prints. The source here reflects how amazing that
could look, though an actual such print would even be more spectacular, but
everyone is abuzz about how fine this looks.
There are some limits and other issues with the print as far as age is
concerned and some more work could be done, but this blows-away most scope
films shot in lesser Super 35mm, which cheats to get the same frame with less
film frame area used. This will be a
demo HD-DVD for a long time to come.
I cannot
say the same about the sound. The Lalo
Schifrin score is up to his prolific work from the time, and in this mix, is the
main feature of the Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 surround mix as it had been with the
standard DVD’s regular Dolby Digital 5.1 mix.
However, that places too much of the dialogue and sound effects in or
too towards the center channel. To make
things worse, this has harmonic distortion that gets in the way. A new remix was called for, especially for
such a good transfer, but this falls short.
There is a better import DTS sound standard DVD with a mix that is much
more involving. It too has issues, but
is much better than this.
Extras
seem to be missing some a past commentary track by Paul Heller, but TV spots,
theatrical trailers, vintage home movies of Lee, interview gallery with widow
Linda Lee, a vintage on location promo featurette for the film and four more
documentary featurettes. That is almost
all the extras from the past double DVD set, but they all are great and only
make this version of Enter The Dragon
the one to own.
- Nicholas Sheffo
