The Big Boss is a 1971 Hong Kong action movie starring Bruce Lee in one of his first feature films. The movie in general is a representation of its time, very exploitative towards the women and with somewhat of a male power fantasy.
In this viewing I noticed for the first time, having spent so much time in Thailand that the filming/production was completed fully in Thailand. I just don’t know which city it was. Some scenes early on you can see the village people can be seen in the background of some of the shots, casually watching the choreography going on. It’s pretty hilarious, I didn’t notice it, so that’s one of the nice things about it is that it’s a time capsule for that specific area at that specific place in time. The majority of the actors, or the extras anyway, the extra fighters, the ice house staff, they’re pretty much all uncredited Thais.
Additionally, in the middle of the movie there’s a large departure from the main plot, which is the boss of the ice plant is shipping cocaine through frozen ice blocks. He starts killing people who don’t want to be involved with the ice and drug trade, and then Bruce Lee eventually has to encounter them. This side quest midway through that I’m talking about is when they have Bruce Lee meet the boss character, and they get him drunk and he ends up in a whorehouse. That whorehouse is full of Thai women. So yeah, this is a completely Thai film with Bruce Lee, the main woman that he’s dealing with, and a couple of other people being Hong Kong.
That part of the film is a slog to get through. Once you ignore that, it’s just a classic martial arts film from the 70s. I enjoy it, but I wish that every time I watched this film, it would be from a point of view of ignorance, because it’s really good if you don’t actually know what you’re looking at.
Re-screened August 11, 2024 on Plex.
