Esce il drago, entra la tigre

Bruce Li stars in a dual role playing Bruce Lee (before he dies) and one of Lee's best friends who battles those responsible for Bruce Lee's death, for reasons unknown the bad guys kidnap Bruce Lee's mistress Betty Teng Pei and Bruce Li kicks but to avenge the matter and make everything okay. The movie is sort of offensive with the premise, however politics aside the movie is just plain dull. Indeed Bruce Li's fight sequences are often shot so we can't see what he's doing. The story makes no sense and the movie doesn't work on any level, even as exploitation. Indeed Bruce Li looks like Bruce Lee and manages to do some impressive moves (though we can't fully enjoy it, as we can't see what's going on) but the movie is lethargically paced, the action badly shot and of course no momentum develops between the action, so what were left with is a boring kung fu movie with better than average production values but nothing worthwhile to watch.

* Out Of 4-(Bad)

Bruce Lee is dead and there must be foul play, there must! How can a movie like this not fail? It must fail. There is no way to make a winner out of this. Instead of action and martial arts we start with people who can do action and martial arts (not act) trying to act, trying to create suspense, mystery, and solve a crime. That must fail. The all talk and no action goes on for 23 minutes before there is a poorly choreographed and filmed fight in the dark. The one thing that could make the movie interesting takes 23 minutes to get to and then flops. This pattern continues until the end. Thanks to the fast forward button I watched the entire movie – with a run time of one hour and eighteen minutes in about thirty minutes. This is the preferred method to watch this movie. I found it almost entertaining that way and rate it a generous four out of ten but only at 2x or 4x speed.

Exit The Dragon, Enter The Tiger is a highly irreverent kung fu cash-in that shamelessly exploits the mystery surrounding the death of '70s martial arts icon Bruce Lee, using it as the impetus for a far-fetched storyline involving Hong Kong movie stars being blackmailed into becoming international drug mules. Casually mixing fact with fiction, the film stars Bruce Li as Bruce Lee acolyte Tiger, who, devastated by his master's sudden death, decides to investigate rumours of foul play. Teaming up with reporter George, Tiger learns of an incriminating tape-recording made by Lee's mistress that makes him the target of crime boss The Baron. Cue lots of kicking and punching as Tiger dispatches numerous henchmen to finally face The Baron.

Showing actual footage of Bruce Lee's corpse during the opening scenes, and introducing fictional character Suzy Yung as the late star's mistress (presumably to avoid being sued by actress Betty Ting Pei, who was rumoured to be Lee's real-life mistress), ETDETT is undeniably disrespectful to the memory of Lee, but as a fan of trashy exploitation films, I couldn't help but have just a little fun with this tawdry chop socky flick. The acting is atrocious, the story risible, and the '70s decor utterly abysmal (witness the world's tackiest cigarette dispenser!), all of which proves unintentionally amusing, while the martial arts scenes, although somewhat repetitive in style for much of the movie, are at least frequent enough to ensure that the pace never lulls. Towards the end of the film, the standard of the fight scenes improves markedly, with a fun clash between Tiger and a female gymnast in a yellow tracksuit (a nod to Game of Death?) and an impressively staged final battle that takes place on the rocky shore of the South China Sea.

This film is pretty good out of many Bruce Lee death plot that plagued the 70's kung-fu film market. Bruce Lee (not the real one) is worried about the mob, so his student "the tiger" who looks like Bruce visits him. Bruce is dead as we see stock footage of his real life funeral, as the Tiger figures out who killed him. There's some real good fight sequence in this film, especially the one at the end where the tiger fights the baron, a mean dude who fights with a top hat on, and it never falls off in fight sequence. Title theme from Issac Hayes music from the film THREE TOUGH GUYS is the main theme! (i wonder if the producers got permission to use it?). If you are looking for quality, this isn't it. But a quick way to kill time, this is your film. The dubbing in this film is first class as Dimention pictures hired Chinese-American dubbing, instead of the usual loud british-chinese dubbing. You can hear American actor James Hong in several voices in this film.

Bruce Lee tells Bruce Li he will be heading to Hong Kong, and Li will be in charge while he's gone. He also mentions there have been some threats. So when Lee dies, Li goes to Hong Kong to investigate the mysterious death.

In reality there was nothing mysterious about Lee's death. It was caused by an allergic reaction to components of a drug, meoprobamate, and his body overheating in part because he had had his underarm sweat grands removed in 1972, because underarm sweat did not photograph pleasingly. This had caused his body to overheat, and this killed him.

Li gets involved in various fights with people who are trying to set up a system of martial arts schools who killed him because he stood in their way. The fights are fast, cut at a great pace -- in order to make them seem better -- and there's lots of location work.

Li's career as Bruce Lee's successor would end by 1983. His last movie was in 1991.