When 42nd Street’s grindhouses brought awareness of Kung Fu to New York in the 1970s, it became a popular form of self-defense in Harlem. He sets out to avenge Master Hu singlehandedly and, to nobody’s surprise, succeeds. The school's Captain urges noble self-restraint in the face of the Japanese-controlled Hung Kiu School’s racist provocations, but Chen’s rage can’t be contained.

A Japanese mole poisons Master Ho to create a leadership crisis and undermine the organization. The Ching Wu School strives for unity among Shanghai’s Chinese (divided along Nationalist-Communist lines), its mission being “to serve the community and country.” Not unlike American self-defense-oriented community organizations liquidated by the FBI in the 1970s, like the Black Panthers and the Young Lords, the school is deemed a threat and infiltrated by the authorities. In Fist of Fury the Japanese Consulate wields most of the power, and they’ve got the Shanghai Police wrapped around their little finger. Shanghai in the 1930s was divided into a French zone, a so-called International Settlement governed jointly by Great Britain and the United States, and a nominally Chinese zone under significant Japanese influence. The prologue tells us that the legend of Ho’s mysterious death exists in countless variations, and that what we’re about to see is the most credible of these. Lee plays Chen, the most reckless disciple of Master Ho, founder of the Ching Wu School of Kung Fu in Shanghai. The Chinese Connection (1972)-not to be confused with Fists of Fury (1971)-directed by jack-of-all-trades Lo Wei, who also served as screenwriter and production designer (Bruce Lee became a notorious self-promotion machine with his sinewy fingers in every part of the production, distribution, and promotion processes, but didn’t direct all his most famous movies). These iconic moves and more are deployed to lethal effect in Fist of Fury a.k.a. Whether we know them through Lee himself of one of his many acolytes-like Gordon Liu or Jet Li-they’re part of our collective muscle memory, and when watching a Bruce Lee movie for the first time it can feel uncannily familiar. Bruce Lee’s crane pose and coolly casual backhand death blows are so oft-spoofed that they’ve become hyperreal the whole world is so familiar with these gestures that any charades performance of Kung Fu is likely to rely on them.

Fist of fury