How Bruce Lee’s Way of the Dragon made Chuck Norris a star with their fight in Rome’s Colosseum, and what the film showed about Lee’s directing
- Bruce Lee was allowed by Golden Harvest’s Raymond Chow to direct The Way of the Dragon because Lee had clashed with veteran director Lo Wei on Fist of Fury
- The film shows Lee’s desire to inject his movies with humour and has a fight scene featuring Chuck Norris that unwittingly made the American an action film star
Less revered than his previous two kung fu films, Bruce Lee’s 1972 The Way of the Dragon is notable nonetheless for highlighting the martial arts star’s potential as a writer/director – as well as for a stunning finale which pits Lee against American karate champ Chuck Norris in Rome’s ancient Colosseum.
“The first work to be directed by Bruce Lee is sadly a flawed and transitional work which now must remain as Lee’s testament, a reminder of the themes he could have developed further, and with more assurance and confidence, had he lived,” writes academic Stephen Teo in Hong Kong Cinema: the Extra Dimensions.
The story features Lee as the bumpkin-like Ah Lung, who travels from Hong Kong’s rural New Territories to Rome to dispense with a criminal gang who are trying to take over a Chinese restaurant.
Lung’s unsophisticated manners initially see him dismissed as ignorant by his Chinese colleagues in the Italian city, but his martial arts skills, and his personal loyalty, soon ensure that he’s elevated to hero status among his peers.