Whenever Bruce Lee stepped onto the screen, he moved at ridiculous speeds, took out legions
of bad guys with his devastating punching power, and inspired audience members to sign
up for martial arts classes in droves. Let's take a look at his most epic fight scenes.
In The Big Boss, Bruce Lee — in his first leading role — plays a young man who's trying
to avoid fistfights after promising his mom he wouldn't get into any more trouble. Unfortunately,
things are kind of rough at work. Our hero spends his days sweating at an ice factory,
and he soon discovers his boss is secretly a drug dealer with a bad habit of killing
people... including members of Lee's family.
After his cousins go mysteriously "missing," Lee explores the ice factory and finds his
relatives all chopped up and frozen. But before he can call the cops, an army of henchmen
shows up, armed with everything from chains and knives to tongs and ice choppers. Fortunately
for viewers, Lee isn't afraid to get inventive: He blinds his enemies with sawdust, cracks
a dude's head with a flashlight, and slashes at his foes with a handsaw.
Sure, Lee is majorly outnumbered, but it doesn't seem to matter. He dodges knives and jumps
over thugs like he's Superman leaping tall buildings. When Lee gets his own blade, we're
treated to geysers of blood spurting across the screen. But the best moment comes when
Lee punches a dude through a wooden shed, leaving a Looney Tunes-style hole in the wall,
complete with outstretched arms.
When Lee shows up at the bad guy's compound at the end of The Big Boss, he's so confident
in his abilities that he's snacking on chips while fighting the drug dealer's goons. And
when he reaches the titular big boss, Lee picks him up over his head and chucks him
across the yard. When the bad guy pulls out some blades, Lee uses his own shirt to keep
the drug dealer at bay. Both dudes are jumping around Crouching Tiger-style, and at one point
in the fight, Lee takes the big boss to the ground, wraps his legs around the bad guy's
legs, and starts rolling across the grass like a crocodile.
Finally, the fight ends in the most insane way possible. The boss hurls a knife at Lee,
and our man kicks it back into the dude's stomach. If that wasn't wild enough, that's
when Lee sticks his hands into the drug dealer's guts. It's a brutal ending, and thanks to
Lee's high-flying kicks and powerful punches, The Big Boss became the highest-grossing film
in Hong Kong history.
There's a lot of political drama happening in Fist of Fury, including the students at
a Japanese dojo who have declared war on Bruce Lee's Chinese martial arts school. Wanting
to show these guys some manners, Lee pays the bullies a visit and teaches them a thing
or two about Chinese etiquette.
Lee just casually struts into enemy territory like he's taking an afternoon stroll, and
soon, he's surrounded by a circle of karate masters. It's a shot that obviously inspired
the Crazy 88 battle in Kill Bill Volume 1, and Bruce is just as devastating as the Bride.
When the bad guys rush in, Lee opens up the fight with eight massive kicks in just six
seconds, sending guys flying.
Better still, this is the first time in cinematic history when Lee gets to show off his nunchaku
skills, and he whacks a whole lot of skulls before dropping to the ground and slapping
some shins. As the fight goes on, the circle of fighters gets smaller and smaller, until
Lee goes one on one with their teacher. Screeching like a tiger, he makes the master look like
an amateur, and when he finally leaves the dojo, all the students are on the floor.
Bruce Lee is like the Chinese Terminator. You can't stop him. All you can do is run.
But while Lee usually walks through his opponents, he finds a worthy adversary in Fist of Fury
when he goes toe-to-toe with a Russian monster.
Played by Robert Baker, Petrov is a Russian karate expert and strongman who can bend metal
bars and drive nails into wooden boards with his bare hands. He's also a skilled martial
artist and, unfortunately, best buds with the dude who murdered Bruce Lee's master.
So when our hero shows up for revenge, first he's got to get through this curly-haired
behemoth.
Sporting a bow tie and suspenders, Petrov sends Lee staggering with a right hook from
hell, and when the fight goes to the ground, the Russian nearly breaks Lee's arm with an
arm bar. While Petrov might have the strength advantage, Lee is just too fast — so fast,
in fact, that when he starts doing his kung fu moves, it looks like he has dozens of arms
waving through the air. It's a classic Bruce Lee scene, and he finishes the fight with
a fatal chop to the throat. It just goes to show that size doesn't matter when you're
up against those furious fists.
Here's a little tip for all you would-be bad guys: don't murder Bruce Lee's master. That's
something Hiroshi Suzuki learns the hard way in Fist of Fury. The master of a Japanese
dojo, Suzuki had Lee's teacher killed, so when our hero shows up at the bad guy's house,
he isn't there to play nice. But Suzuki is waiting with katana in hand.
Lee quickly grabs a wooden post, but Suzuki whittles that thing down to a toothpick. After
the katana gets too close for comfort, that's when the nunchucks come out. Eventually, Lee
knocks the sword across the room, then tosses his own weapon aside and starts intercepting
Suzuki's face with his fist.
Finally, the battle comes to an end when the two enemies jump at each other, and Lee kicks
Suzuki through the air, sending him flying through the paper-thin walls. Evidently, it's
one powerful kick, as the bad guy immediately starts throwing up blood before keeling over
dead.
Bruce Lee made his directorial debut with Way of the Dragon, a comedic kung fu flick
that has Lee flying to Italy to help out some Chinese immigrant friends of his. It seems
that after they opened up a restaurant in Rome, they ran into trouble with the mob.
Needless to say, these schlubby gangsters are no match for Bruce Lee. Hoping to scare
him back to Hong Kong, the gangsters take Lee out behind the restaurant, where he grabs
a wooden pole and shows off some bo staff skills. When more punks show up to the party,
armed with chains and switchblades, Lee pulls out two pairs of nunchucks, and we all know
exactly how that goes.
Then, in perhaps the funniest scene in any Bruce Lee movie, a gangster gets his own pair
of nunchucks and tries to beat Bruce Lee at his own game, but he only succeeds in whacking
himself in the head. Then, when Lee goes back to the restaurant to rescue his friends, he
takes out some thugs with homemade wooden darts. Lee might not understand Italian customs,
but he certainly knows how to mess up some mobsters.
What do you do when all your henchmen can't beat Bruce Lee? Well, if you're the evil crime
boss from Way of the Dragon, you hire Chuck Norris, of course.
"He will be the one that will personally take care of that Tang Lung."
The two legends throw down in the Coliseum, and after some pre-fight stretching, the battle
of the titans begins. Norris is absolutely ferocious, and it's clear this guy has the
strength advantage. He drops Lee with a spinning roundhouse kick, lands a solid combination
of elbows and body shots, and then judo tosses Lee to the floor. But everything changes when
Lee starts dancing around the Coliseum like he's Muhammad Ali.
The movement makes all the difference, and the flat-footed Norris can't keep up. In a
beautiful slow motion sequence, we watch Lee dodge and parry blows before unleashing a
stunning four-kick combo that turns the fight in his favor. Eventually, Lee brings the greatest
martial arts showdown to a close by killing Norris with a sick guillotine choke.
The movie that turned Bruce Lee into an international star, Enter the Dragon follows our high-kicking
hero as he's tasked with joining a mysterious martial arts tournament and bringing down
the criminal kingpin running the contest. But the stakes are personal for Lee. One of
the competitors is responsible for the death of Lee's sister, so when the two are pitted
against each other, Lee isn't going to turn the other cheek.
Played by martial artist Bob Wall, O'Hara is the psycho on Lee's hit list. The dude
has an attitude as big as the scar running down his face, and when he squares off against
Lee, he tries to make a big impression by punching a wooden board in half. But Lee isn't
fazed and famously tells his opponent,
"Boards don't hit back."
Bruce Lee, on the other hand, hits back a whole lot. Every time they face off, Lee lands
the first blow, and then he sends O'Hara soaring with a scary slo-mo kick. Infuriated, O'Hara
grabs some broken bottles and plans on carving Lee up. But after a well-placed kick to the
jaw, Lee jumps on the dude's head and breaks O'Hara's neck.
After a whole bunch of kung fu battles throughout Enter the Dragon, the villainous Han and Lee
finally square off in the film's big showdown, a scene filled with classic Bruce Lee moments.
There's the kick from hell that nearly decapitates Han. There's the scorpion kick that leaves
the villain hurting and humiliated. And then there's the insane scene in which a freshly
cut Lee licks his own bloody fingers to prove he's a savage.
Finally, the showdown moves into a hall of mirrors, where Han uses the reflections to
his advantage, hiding in plain sight. But after remembering some words of his wisdom
from his old teacher, Lee smashes all the glass, so there's nowhere left for Han to
hide. The crazy scene comes to an end when Lee sidekicks Han so hard that he flies straight
into a spear.
Game of Death is one of the biggest "what ifs?" in movie history. Lee only shot 40 minutes
of the film before his untimely death, but his vision sounds epic. The plot was going
to follow Lee as he fought his way up a pagoda in search of a valuable treasure. Each time
he reached a new floor, he would face a new boss who specialized in a specific martial
art. Lee would have to overcome each master with Jeet Kune Do, a philosophy based on adaptability
and using whatever works in a fight, regardless of style.
However, after Lee's death, the plot was completely changed, a Bruce Lee lookalike filled in for
most of the movie, and only 11 minutes of the original Game of Death footage showed
up in the final cut. Regardless of that, the battle with Dan Inosanto in the film is a
testament to Lee's swagger and speed. An escrima expert, Inosanto relies on rattan sticks to
batter his opponents, but Lee fights back with a simple bamboo reed.
Lee is incredibly cocky here, and it's so fun to watch him dance, strut, and scream
his way through the fight. Eventually, the bad guy trades his sticks for nunchucks, and
naturally, Lee pulls out his own pair. That's when both guys start twirling their weapons
like they're Wild West gunfighters, showing off their tricks, and the battle ends when
Lee chokes out Inosanto with the nunchucks.
Game of Death gave us two iconic images: Bruce Lee wearing the yellow-and-black jumpsuit,
and the sight of Lee trading blows with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. In the theatrical release of
the film, Abdul-Jabbar is a member of a syndicate that blackmails movie stars. In Lee's longer,
original scene, the NBA player was the final boss at the top of a pagoda, guarding a treasure
and accepting all challengers. In both versions, it's a David and Goliath scenario, as Abdul-Jabbar's
legs are almost longer than Lee's entire body.
Sporting sunglasses and short shorts, the basketball player batters Lee with looping
punches and long kicks, leaving a massive footprint on the front of Lee's cool yellow
suit. For a good chunk of the fight, Lee has trouble closing the distance, and while he
manages to get in some good shots, Abdul-Jabbar is so big that Lee gets clobbered anytime
he gets close.
However, in the original footage, Lee discovers the giant has a weakness: sunlight. Lee begins
smashing out windows, causing Abdul-Jabbar to cringe in pain as light floods the room.
Eventually, Lee knocks the sunglasses off Abdul-Jabbar's face, leaving him defenseless
as Lee locks in a choke hold.
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