Cheng Chiu On (Bruce Lee) goes to Thailand to help out in an ice factory. Trouble breaks out in the form of a labour dispute, but Cheng cannot retaliate because of a promise he made to his mother not to get involved in fights. The situation turns sinister, though, when Cheng realises that the ice-packing plant is actually a cover for a drug distribution operation.

Reviewing THE BIG BOSS seems a bit pointless as, let’s face it, everyone’s already seen it. However, it’s been so damn long since I’ve seen the film that I felt compelled to write about it after seeing it again. There are numerous reasons why I don’t watch this one too often, but a couple of reasons stand out. The first is that there doesn’t seem to be a satisfactory version available. The Hong Kong Legends DVD of a few years back had a Cantonese track, which I thought was a step in the right direction, but gone was the funky theme tune and incidental music. In its place was something that seemed really out of place, including, in places, the use of a section of Pink Floyd’s Time. Now, don’t get me wrong, I really love Pink Floyd, but I don’t think it fits a Bruce Lee movie, especially seeing as how it was recorded a good couple of years after the film was shot. The other main reason is that, well, I just don’t like the movie very much.

To solve the audio conundrum, I did a thing you’ll probably never hear from me again – I watched the English dub. It was worth it to hear the theme tune and all the old music again, and I found listening to the corny voices a bit of a novelty – especially when the kindly old uncle slips out a “why, if I was ten years younger...!” when appraising young Mei Lin (Maria Yi). Lecherous old devil! Anyway, I’m not sure if this was the old dub that used to grace the old Rank videos as I seem to recall a place where James Tien was talking to the manager of the ice factory and their dialogue getting so muddled the voice actors ended up swapping characters. If you’ve seen it, you’ll know what I mean! And why does the Boss’s son ask to borrow 2,000 Yen from his father? I thought this film was set in Thailand, not Japan!

It is a bit like heresy criticising a Bruce Lee film, but THE BIG BOSS has not aged very well. This is partly down to the curious mismatch of cinematic styles used in the movie. This was 1970, and Hong Kong action movies were undergoing a radical change away the Wuxia Pian style of action involving trampoline jumps and feats of superhuman agility towards a more realistic depiction of fighting. THE BIG BOSS sits uncomfortably between two stools, still using some of the old cinematic tricks while building on the foundations laid by THE CHINESE BOXER and VENGEANCE! and the result occasionally looks messy and not a little silly.

The plot is not terribly interesting either. Basically, it involves a drug operation fronted by a ice manufacturing plant (until I watched this film, I had no idea some people actually MADE ice for a living!) and workers go missing periodically when they’re knocked off by the boss or his henchmen. Cue lots of concerned co-workers running about as one looking for their missing friends and so forth. The acting’s pretty atrocious, too – I love the twin gasps of shock when the manager explains to the two naive workers what the factory actually produces, and look out for a very young Lam Ching-Ying and his attempt at portraying “thoughtful contemplation” in one scene.

But the main problem is the fact that Bruce Lee does nothing for the first 43 minutes. Until then, this is really James Tien’s movie, and decent though the guy is (here his character seems to be a kind of saint-in-waiting), who really wants to see a James Tien movie? This is done partly to tease the audience. The hype over the first Bruce Lee movie was immense and so instead of saturating the movie with Bruce, he is dished out sparingly. Instead of rushing into fights, Lee looks mournfully at his mother’s pendant and remembers his promise to not get into trouble. Of course, the pendant eventually shatters and Lee feels this breaks his obligation to the promise – and he finally springs into action.

After Lee loses his pendant, it’s like the film loses a lead weight around its neck and things definitely take off. It’s just damn shame that it took so long, though. The film’s action is surprisingly brutal for the time, even compared to the glossier Shaw Brothers films. The tone and content is sometimes puzzling, though – even now I’m not sure if that part where Bruce knocks one of the gang through the wooden wall, leaving a perfect, cartoon-like outline behind is supposed to be funny or not.

It’s things like that that definitely draw attention to Lo Wei’s abilities as a director. While there are moments of pure bone-headedness (remember the death of the prostitute, who evidently doesn’t see her assassin coming?), there are touches of subtlety you wouldn’t really associate with the director. I like the moment early in the movie when Bruce nonchalantly steals a glance at Maria Yi, only to find that she is already looking at him, leading him to look uncomfortably away. Also, the scene that juxtaposes Lee’s sumptuous meal with the boss and his apparent “selling out” with the simple fare of the honest workers is surprisingly good and probably allegorical of something I can’t quite put my finger upon. There are also some scenes of effective tension later on when Lee discovers the slaughter of his comrades.

I enjoyed THE BIG BOSS a lot more than I expected this time around, and a lot of that is down to my choice of watching it with the original music. Watching it now, as a UK citizen, it’s ironic that the film seems the least “complete” of the Bruce Lee films now as it was by far the least censored in this territory in the bad old days when even muttering the word “nunchaku” was likely to result in a cut. While it is definitely not a great movie, I can at least understand why it was such an exciting moment in Hong Kong cinema. One thing I’ll never understand, though, is why the bad guys chop up the bodies of the workers and encase them in ice instead of just disposing of them so they can’t be found by a vengeful Bruce...