Bruce Lee at Golden Harvest Limited Edition 4K UHD [Blu-ray] [Region Free]

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The Way of the Dragon however looks softer, likely in part due to being taken from an interpositive and not the OCN as with the previous films (the IP was used on the recent Criterion release and with Arrow’s careful wording of its restoration, it’s an easy assumption to make). He ended up in a bidding war between the well-established studio Shaw Brothers and upstart competitor Golden Harvest. Lee asserted his artistic independence by directing, writing and starring in The Way of the Dragon, arguably his most thrilling and personal film. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen The Big Boss, but I did feel the film flowed a little better in this longer cut, particularly the first half. Using two stand-ins for the Lee role, the movie is honestly a cobbled mess, edited together — sometimes sloppily so — from Lee's other movies, which includes real footage of his funeral, with new sequences directed by Robert Clouse ( Enter the Dragon) mostly shooting the lookalikes ("Lee-alikes") from behind or under heavy shadows.

Visually, there’s also some clumsiness present as Lee strove to learn his craft (there’s far too many out of focus shots than anyone should reasonably expect) but it shows an evolving style thanks to his extended use of shadows and that hand-held camera work (he wanted more but the aging DP, Japanese legend Tadashi Nishimoto simply couldn’t manage it), as well as expanding on the fluid, wide-angled, long take fight scenes that so effortlessly showcased his considerable skills. In close ups, the requisite facial, clothing and set textures are beautifully sharp and clear, including the wonderful sea of faces of the locals striving to watch the filming, all having a coherence that just belies not just the films’ relatively cheap origins, but the years of poorly transferred TV, VHS and DVD versions most of us grew up watching (albeit in truncated form for this reviewer). Although fixed to the center of the screen, imaging comes with a great sense of presence and balance, exhibiting clean definition and fidelity in the music while the action maintains excellent distinction and clarity in the upper frequencies. However, from the looks of it, it appears that they used the same master created for the 4K transfer above and simply re-edited the previously deleted scenes back into the film. Lee first made the obvious decision to approach Run Run Shaw at Shaw Brothers but, unimpressed by the deal offered to him, he looked elsewhere.

Not only does his quick visit to get laid seem out-of-character, but it’s also ridiculously placed just before the final fight, straight after Lee has psyched himself up to get revenge! The film plays like an Eastern influenced James Bond spy romp, with the fight choreography hitting such high points as the final fight in the hall of mirrors with Han’s steel claws so as to pass into cinema lore. Saturation and colour density are helped by the HDR grades, which are subtle but help add more depth and nuance to the shades on show overall, especially on those darker night time scenes in Fist of Fury and the beads of sweat covering, well, everyone in The Big Boss. Ignoring previously shot fight footage of Lee, various unused shots of him simply looking at the camera were used, together with a montage of scenes from his child acting days, to craft a story of a kung fu master (Lee) investigating the death of his own master and himself perishing during the funeral thanks to a helicopter heist of the casket.

Updated daily and in real-time, we track all high-def disc news and release dates, and review the latest disc titles. But still, the Brucesploitation craze continued, thanks to the success of Game of Death especially in Japan and two years later, Golden Harvest yet again raided their vaults of Lee footage and created Game of Death II in 1980. The rest are Blu-rays with also excellent audio and video presentations of each, four of which are bonus discs housing exhaustive featurettes and alternate versions of the aforementioned Bruceploitation movies.

The rest are Blu-rays, including Enter the Dragon and Game of Death II, with also excellent audio and video presentations of each, and the other four bonus discs house exhaustive featurettes of Lee's life, impact and legacy, as well as alternate versions of the aforementioned Bruceploitation movies. Choice is key here and this release brilliantly includes a huge range of audio options for fans who may have grown up with a very particular soundtrack lodged in their brains. encode delivers a relatively worthy upgrade over previous Blu-ray releases and a notable uptick from the French Ultra HD edition by Metropolitan. And every time it did, I just had to watch it, laying on my stomach in front of our Zenith wood cabinet TV and be mesmerized by the kickass action, as well as hear Lee's signature "Wataah! Others made the most of this unprecedented fame though and countless imitators jumped on the ‘Brucesploitation’ bandwagon.