But Lee's speed and skill are immediately apparent in all of the features, the filmmakers wisely avoid revealing his rapid-fire abilities until they can be put to good use, but once unleashed Lee offers a torrent of activity that puts accelerated cinematography and CGI trickery to shame. The martial arts performed in this film, much less the rest of the movies, isn't liable to demolish any preconceived notions about action choreography - much of it features stagey exchanges where the characters throttle one another (without defending themselves, of course) until a victor emerges. In the film, Lee plays Cheng Chao-an, a city slicker banished to live and work with his podunk villager relatives despite his vow to avoid trouble, he soon finds himself ensconced in it when his employer turns out to be a drug runner, and naturally must fight his way free from his adversary's corrupt influence. In many ways, The Big Boss is a movie not unlike, say, Primal Fear, Mulholland Drive or even The Believer - that is, a sort of epochal release that announces the arrival of a singular talent even more so than it does its own relative merits. But here they have not only been restored to their original Cantonese glory, but polished off and remastered to a sheen that surpasses most modern movies, much less ones made more than three decades ago. Astute fans will notice that the films have been accurately titled for the first time ever in America because several of these semi-classics were distributed in the States after the success of his fourth film, Enter the Dragon, they suffered the indignities of Western-style repackaging ( The Big Boss was redubbed Fists of Fury, Fist of Fury christened The Chinese Connection, and Way of the Dragon saddled with the pseudonym Return of the Dragon). Eviscerating video and DVD sets of years past, the Bruce Lee Ultimate Collection offers remastered versions of five - well, technically three and a half - of Lee's most famous works: The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon, Game of Death, and Game of Death II.
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