Before you invest your cash into something other than beer to go see The Protector, brush up on your martial arts movie history with these five classics that span the decades. These movies will have you practicing the Crane all day long – don’t be afraid to use your skills; just leave the cheesy headband, a la Ralph Macchio, at home.
1972 marked President Richard Nixon’s visit to the People’s Republic of China and saw the beginning of the Watergate scandal. On the pop culture front, ’72 saw the meeting of Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris in Revenge of the Dragon – a deliciously ridiculous action-comedy written and directed by Lee. Before Norris became Walker, Texas Ranger and Lee donned the yellow track suit in Game of Death that would reinvigorate Uma Thurman’s career nearly 30 years later, Revenge of the Dragon was a campy flick full of bad dialogue and good action scenes. Worthy of a cheesy movie night, if only to see Norris get the granddaddy of beatdowns from Lee.
Martial arts movies burst into the mainstream with this film, one of Bruce Lee’s first – and arguably the finest. American-produced, Enter the Dragon was released in 1973 and featured Bruce as Lee, a member of the Shaolin Temple who is sent undercover to infiltrate a drug lord’s martial arts tournament (really a front for illegal sex and drugs, but no rock and roll). Small but sinister, Lee dominates the film with his beautifully violent action scenes and sets the tone for all movies to follow.
In the decade of The Breakfast Club, The Outsiders and Weird Science, teenagers everywhere could see a silver lining on their awkward adolescent years while watching a quintessential ’80s underdog movie. In 1984, Ralph Macchio became their king as Daniel LaRusso in The Karate Kid, where he found a Yoda-like father figure in Mr. Miyagi, a girlfriend in Ali Mills and a moment of pure Zen when he Crane-kicked the WASP-y Johnny Lawrence into oblivion. GQ recently named Lawrence as the No. 1 pretty boy movie jerk we love to hate, but it’s Macchio who achieved Rocky-like grandeur in our delicate teenage psyches. Oh, and the fighting is cool too.
It’s rare to see a martial arts movie have a touching love story at its core, but Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – which won four Oscars and crafted Ang Lee’s directing skills, which he would later use in Brokeback Mountain – did just that. Superb acting by Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Ziyi Zhang and Chen Chang brought emotion and intensity to two parallel love stories defined by revenge, duty and heartache.
The superb cinematography made the unbelievable fight scenes – full of warriors who could gracefully balance on tree branches and walk across water while wielding swords – believable.
Contact reporter Roxana Hadadi at hadadidbk@gmail.com.
