Enter the Dragon (1973)
A martial artist agrees to spy on a reclusive crime lord using his invitation to a tournament there as cover.
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What critics compared Enter the Dragon to
Director Stahelski pays fitting tribute to Bruce Lee and “Enter the Dragon” in one fight sequence.
In one well-executed scene, Wick navigates a hall of mirrors reminiscent of Bruce Lee’s final battle in “Enter the Dragon.”
Whether he’s driving a classic 1969 Mustang into the ground or moving stealthily through an “Enter the Dragon”-esque maze of mirrors, Reeves is, like the movie around him, a stunning object of contemplation.
Stahelski and his stunt team don’t hold back either, delivering one great set piece after the other with ultra-slick precision, whether it’s Wick going toe-to-toe with a fellow assassin in Rome or shooting his way through a gang of hired thugs in the “Enter the Dragon”-inspired climax.
Every set, every shot, has been carefully constructed and artfully illuminated as if fight-choreographer-turned-director Chad Stahelski had placed "Lethal Weapon," "Enter the Dragon," "Hardboiled" and the 1960s British TV series "The Prisoner" into a cinematic blender and concocted a motion picture of such visual mastery, every frame could be a postcard photograph.
There’s also a disorienting callback to the Room of Mirrors finalé from Enter the Dragon, which modernizes the locale to a trendy New York art museum.
Here, Kavanaugh tops himself with spectacular, anachronistic clashes (people use cellphones, but also old-fashioned switch boards and rotary dials) and a stunning, all-glass high-rise office building no doubt inspired by the iconic Hall of Mirrors climax from Bruce Lee's chop-sockey classic "Enter the Dragon."
Guns are standard, but this time Keanu Reeves gets to play with swords, books (in an hilariously violent opening), horses, belts, motorbikes, hatchets, some pretty cool attack dogs (alongside Halle Berry) and also appears in a homage to the hall of mirrors finale in Enter The Dragon .
The film regains its footing in the final battle in a glass-filled space, similar to the Hall of Mirrors in “Enter the Dragon” (1973).
A climactic duel takes place in a glassy hall-of-mirrors-like set that may be a shout-out to the climax of the Bruce Lee movie Enter the Dragon .
Brief respites for humor (villain Dacascos is irregular but amusing to see in a big-budget endeavor), some Jackie Chan-styled fighting, and vengeful dogs become the high points, while the protracted finale, overflowing with heavy-hitting yet underwhelming skirmishes, is a strangely disappointing lull (mixing “Enter the Dragon” with “The Man with the Golden Gun”).
You can find more reflections of the Bond series in the music of Lalo Schifrin and in the villain's artificial, Dr. No-like hand and his Blofeld white cat; and you'll see literal reflections of Orson Welles's "The Lady from Shanghai" in the climactic mirror scene.
And that it borrows heavily from a half-dozen other round-eye action films, especially "The Lady from Shanghai" with its replicating mirror sequence, the borrowings coming damn close to plagiarism.
For this chop-socky farce � the title an obvious reference to the 1973 Bruce Lee classic Enter the Dragon � writer/director/star Steve Oedekerk (he penned the hammy script for Patch Adams) has taken a superfluous 1976 Hong Kong actioner (Tiger & Crane Fists), redubbed it with silly, droll dialogue, and spliced himself into the plot � as the protagonist, of all things.
Combining scenes from The Matrix , Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Enter the Dragon, a whole variety of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movies, as well as scenes from Twister with a heavy dose of Tom Green humour and fart and poop jokes, Kung Pow! Enter the Fist is 73-minutes too long.
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The plot seems taken directly from any number of video games, with a healthy dash of Bruce Lee's "Enter the Dragon" thrown in.
The filmmakers offer obvious nods to everything from Ray Harryhausen ("The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad," "Jason and the Argonauts") to Bruce Lee ("Enter the Dragon") to George Lucas ("Star Wars").
This "mysterious stranger with a deadly agenda" plot springboards into a madcap mix of crazy Vietnam War vet dramas, 1980s mad slasher thrillers (with a "Halloween"-like score), and an homage to Bruce Lee's last movie, "Enter the Dragon" with its climatic hall-of-mirrors smackdown.
It houses its smarts in a vehicle that borrows scenes and style from movies as diverse as Billy Dee's own Hit, Jack Hill's Coffy and Foxy Brown, Shaft (of course), Bare Knuckles, and Jim Kelly's kung fu sagas--especially Black Belt Jones and Enter the Dragon, from which a Kelly sequence appears on a television set at one point in Undercover Brother.
KFP, from a clever screenplay by ex-King of the Hill writers Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, is a tribute to the literally hundreds of '70s Hong Kong martial arts dramas that flooded Saturday-morning U.S. TV in the wake of Bruce Lee's success with Enter the Dragon.
This time, though, even with a surfeit of battle sequences riffing on live-action martial arts iconography dating back to "Enter the Dragon," the energy captivates.
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They also enthusiastically discuss the 1973 Bruce Lee action film “Enter the Dragon,” which is “The Black Phone” filmmakers’ nod to how popular Lee was with teenage boys in that era.
The orchestral score gives way to traditional Chinese music (original music by Raymond Wong, non-original music by Pablo de Sarasate from various works) and the three sided tenement known as Pig Sty Alley, run by a sleazy, aluminum hair-clipped Landlord (Yuen Wah, "Enter the Dragon") and his battle axe of a wife, the indomitable Landlady (Yuen Qiu, "The Man With the Golden Gun").