Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.0

Fist of Fury Blu-ray Movie Review

Bruce Lee kicks it up a notch.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 10, 2013

Note: This film is currently only available as part of Bruce Lee: The Legacy Collection.

For hordes of baby boomers, Bruce Lee will probably forever be Kato. In the wake of the insanely popular Adam West Batman series, ABC greenlit another superhero in the hopes of lightning striking twice, but The Green Hornet had neither Batman’s campy sense of humor nor, ultimately, its popularity (though truth be told, by the time The Green Hornet aired, Batman was probably already at its all time peak in popularity and was soon to begin losing its audience, ultimately following its sibling into the purgatory of cancellation and endless reruns via syndication). Bruce Lee made such an impression as Van Williams’ sidekick in The Green Hornet that the series was actually known colloquially in many international markets as The Kato Show. Many Westerners at least were unaware that Lee had toiled in film for years as a child actor before his breakout role in American television. Though The Green Hornet was not in itself a success, it raised Lee’s profile to the point where he at least could find occasional work as a guest star in other American television series, but perhaps surprisingly it took a few more years until Lee’s tragically brief adult film career finally took hold. Over the course of a mere two or so years, Lee made only five films, but he established himself as the leading martial arts star of his generation and due perhaps at least somewhat to his untimely death at the age of 32 in 1973, Lee rather quickly became even more legendary, part of that cadre of stars who, rather like James Dean, experienced a post-mortem reassessment of their contributions that only grew with the passing years. The international market has seen several Blu-ray releases of Lee’s first films over the years, both singly and in deluxe boxed sets, but fans were overjoyed to hear of this new Shout! Factory set, which includes four of Lee’s five films (Enter the Dragon is a Warner property and has been released on Blu-ray by that studio). Joy turned to shock, however, when early recipients of this extravagantly packaged set started complaining that Fortune Star, who had provided the masters to Shout! for this release, had “cheated” viewers by supplying upscaled standard definition transfers rather than native high definition properties.

. . .and now, for the rest of the story. Paul Harvey used to tease his radio audiences with that famous introductory phrase, and it’s more or less perfect for “what happened next”. After comments from consumers who received early versions of the first release, and (if I might be less than perfectly humble for a moment) the original Blu-ray.com review, Shout! realized there was something wrong with the release. While they remained a bit circumspect on what was happening, with original reports seeming to focus only on the mislabeled discs I had identified in my original review, Shout! ultimately evidently uncovered newer high definition masters for three of the films and went back to the drawing board to recreate and reissue the set. There have been a lot of accusations flying around the internet (what else is new?) alleging all kinds of nefarious behavior, but I for one find this neither helpful nor ultimately of much importance. What matters is that Shout! has tried to address concerns and has probably gone to considerable expense to recall the first set and reissue this “new, improved” one. Their official statement detailing the differences in this new set reads:

Correct pairing of disc label art and media for discs 10 and 11, which had inadvertently been swapped on the original release.

New Blu-rays for The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon. Contrary to speculation circulating on the internet, the original set did contain hi-def masters of the first three feature films. However, after comments from fans who had received early copies of our set, we discovered that our sources were not the recently restored transfers used for the Blu-rays in Hong Kong and Japan, but rather the original masters done a few years ago in Canada. We therefore acquired the improved masters (the master for Game of Death was no appreciably different), and have included them on this new set, for a truly definitive Bruce Lee collection.

Some fans have thrown brickbats at Shout! for supposedly not “coming clean” about whether the first set contained upscales or not, and to them I’d simply ask two questions, the first of which is: what difference does it make, now that Shout! has corrected the problem? The second, perhaps tangential, question is whether this is simply a matter of terminology. As lovers of FUNimation anime releases are well aware, that label regularly lists releases as HD native when what they really mean is that they have been provided (pre-existing) upscaled HD masters of native SD content. That may in fact be what has happened here, but again, I find the brouhaha a relatively moot point, now that corrected masters have been provided.

There’s a rather sizable leap forward (no pun intended) by Bruce Lee in Fist of Fury, after his halting performance and sometimes shoddily directed fight sequences in The Big Boss. Fist of Fury captured the public’s attention in a rather remarkable way, and catapulted Lee into mainstream consciousness. The film is a quasi-historical epic relaying the oft-told story of Chen Zhen, a famous martial artist who gets caught in the long simmering dispute between China and Japan, something that comes to a boil after Zhen’s master dies and Zhen is convinced he’s been murdered.

Zhen’s temper gets the best of him (repeatedly) throughout this film, and in an early scene Zhen takes out a virtual army of Japanese, “proving” that the Chinese fighting style is intrinsically superior to the Japanese. That only leads to a domino effect of cascading repercussions, to the point where Zhen is more or less exiled, left to go it alone in his quest for justice regarding the mysterious death of his teacher.

Fist of Fury has been remade a number of times over the years, including 2010’s Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen. But this is the film that really established Lee’s distinctive fighting style as well as his extremely unique persona, one given to those weird, almost rubbery, facial expressions (always highlighted by insane zooms in) and explosions of action that seem to just burst out of nowhere. Dramatically, the film is more than a bit clunky, but Lee’s charisma easily carries it over its roughest patches and it remains one of his most memorable screen appearances.

Fist of Fury Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Note: Screencaps 1-10 are taken from this new release. Screencaps 11-20 are from the original recalled release. I have included at least a couple of "similar" frames for comparison as well as other moments from the film for a general overview of the changes.

Fist of Fury is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Shout! Factory with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1 (the original release was framed in 2.39:1). The first thing that will probably be noticed in this new release is that it's slightly darker and more brown appearing than the original release was. Whether this is the more accurate presentation or not I'm not able to state definitively, though I will say that generally speaking, the darkness didn't bother me as much as the slightly brown tint to much of this presentation. The high definition presentation here is certainly less problematic than the first, though the uptick is probably more marginal than might be expected. Midrange shots still have the tendency to look pretty soft and fuzzy, and indeed even close-ups have a slightly gauzy appearance. There is abundant and natural looking grain in this presentation.

Fist of Fury Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Shout! Factory has included several different audio options, but their menu listings either don't always match what's actually present or fail to disclose whether the tracks are lossless or not. The following list offers the menu listings followed by actual audio specs in parentheses, if those differ from the menu listing or if further clarification is needed:

• Original Mandarin Mono (Dolby Digital 2.0)
** (See Update Below)
• Mandarin DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
• Cantonese Mono (Dolby Digital 2.0)
• Cantonese DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
• English Mono (Dolby Digital 2.0)
• English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1

There is obviously no dearth of choices here, but audiophiles may just automatically reject the Dolby Digital mixes as not being up to their standards. If that's so, that leaves the three DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks, all obviously repurposed from the original mono mixes. Personally, I would jettison the English track right off the bat. Not only is the dubbing pretty bad, there's is rampant phasing that makes the track almost unlistenable at times. The phasing gets to almost ridiculous levels at times with some of the sound effects (just check out the rainstorm in the film's opening sequence for a great example). I'm assuming this results from foley effects being "copied" to surround channels but being slightly out of phase; that said, the anomaly also afflicts the dialogue. The Cantonese track is slightly more present, though it also has added hiss in the high frequencies. The Mandarin track is probably the most "natural" sounding, though it's obvious on all of these tracks that actors were speaking different languages/dialects and a lot of post-looping was done. Surround activity is relatively limited in all of the 5.1 tracks, relegated mostly to sound effects and score.

Update: It appears that this poor set may in fact be cursed. The original Mandarin Mono track has unfortunately been replaced with a (duplicate) Cantonese track on the revised set. I apologize for missing this as I went through the revised set; I had a huge amount of specs/updating to do, and while I spot checked all of the audio mixes on all of the discs, I simply missed this error.

Fist of Fury Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailers (1080i; 4:10)


• U.S. TV Spot (1080p; 2:22)


• Alternate Title Sequence (1080p; 7:31)


• Alternate Ending (1080p; 1:23)


• Remembering Fist of Fury (1080i; 30:45) features actor Jason Tobin, who seems a bit too young to actually be "remembering" the film, and martial arts movie director Isaac Florentine, who doesn't.


• Interview with Yuen Wah (1080i; 9:40)


• Still Gallery (1080p; 3:41)


• Audio Commentary by Hong Kong Film Expert Mike Leeder is another really interesting commentary that is hampered by some really bad phasing.

Fist of Fury Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Fist of Fury may be predictable and a little silly at times, but it's a huge step up from The Big Boss. There are a number of spectacular set pieces in this film, all of which benefit from everything Lee and some of the holdover crew from The Big Boss learned on the first film. This Blu-ray offers surprisingly a somewhat darker and more brown looking video presentation (when compared to the first releaes), while the many audio options offer a glut of choices (with one notable error), even if some of them are lossy. The special features here are generally well done, but a bit less impressive than on some of the other films in this set.