My life has been very calm for the past week or two. I wrote “surprisingly calm,” then deleted it, because in some ways it’s not a surprise. It shouldn’t be, at least; I’ve been slowly eliminating distractions in my life so that I could just be. Now I’ve finally reached a tipping point, where there’s very little that I make myself do.
So, last night, I could watch another Bruce Lee
Return of the Dragon is a very 1970’s film, and of course I mean that in a bad way, because almost all films of the 70’s sucked. It was a period of unflinching realism in film, which meant that every film was set in a
But it’s not all bad; Bruce was a good actor, and more than that, he had real screen presence. Your eyes are just drawn to him. It was fun to see him playing around with a
And his final fight, the duel with Chuck Norris, is engaging and amazing. This isn’t a simple fight; it’s a duel between two masters, who clearly respect each other. Occasionally, during a brief pause in the fight, one or the other will smile, as if saying, “You’re good.” The fact that they didn’t know each others’ language improves the fight too, as there’s no dialogue. It’s just fighting, intercut almost absurdly with a kitten who’s watching the fight. It adds a softness to the fight, a reminder that this is not simply a grim deathmatch.
If the film had excised the flamboyantly gay interpreter who whines for what seems like half the movie and some of the more annoying evil flunkies, I’d be raving. Ah well.