MOVIEmeter
SEE RANK
Down 58 this week

The Way of the Dragon (1972)
"Meng long guo jiang" (original title)

7.1
Your rating:
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 -/10 X  
Ratings: 7.1/10 from 14,373 users  
Reviews: 97 user | 38 critic

A man visits his relatives at their restaurant in Italy and has to help them defend against brutal gangsters harassing them.

Director:

Writer:

(screenplay)
0Check in
0Share...

User Lists

Related lists from IMDb users

a list of 2695 titles created 3 months ago
 
a list of 1473 titles created 23 Oct 2011
 
a list of 316 titles created 22 Mar 2011
 
a list of 9 titles created 2 weeks ago
 
a list of 54 titles created 6 months ago
 

Connect with IMDb


Share this Rating

Title: The Way of the Dragon (1972)

The Way of the Dragon (1972) on IMDb 7.1/10

Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below.

Take The Quiz!

Test your knowledge of The Way of the Dragon.
1 win. See more awards »
Learn more

People who liked this also liked... 

Action | Crime | Drama
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.6/10 X  

A martial artist agrees to spy on a reclusive crime lord using his invitation to a tournament there as cover.

Director: Robert Clouse
Stars: Bruce Lee, John Saxon, Jim Kelly
Fists of Fury (1971)
Action | Crime | Drama
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 6.9/10 X  

A young man sworn to an oath of non-violence works with his cousins in an ice factory where they mysteriously begin to disappear.

Director: Wei Lo
Stars: Bruce Lee, Maria Yi, James Tien
Rush Hour (1998)
Action | Comedy | Thriller
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 6.8/10 X  

Two cops team up to get back a kidnapped daughter.

Director: Brett Ratner
Stars: Ken Leung, Jackie Chan, Tom Wilkinson
Action | Comedy | Crime
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.3/10 X  

A freewheeling Detroit cop pursuing a murder investigation finds himself dealing with the very different culture of Beverly Hills.

Director: Martin Brest
Stars: Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton
Desperado (1995)
Action | Crime | Thriller
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.1/10 X  

A gunslinger is embroiled in a war with a local drug runner.

Director: Robert Rodriguez
Stars: Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Joaquim de Almeida
Bad Boys (1995)
Action | Comedy | Crime
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 6.7/10 X  

Two hip detectives protect a murder witness while investigating a case of stolen heroin.

Director: Michael Bay
Stars: Lisa Boyle, Will Smith, Martin Lawrence
48 Hrs. (1982)
Action | Comedy | Crime
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 6.9/10 X  

A hard-nosed cop reluctantly teams up with a wise-cracking criminal temporarily paroled to him, in order to track down a killer.

Director: Walter Hill
Stars: Nick Nolte, Eddie Murphy, Annette O'Toole
Exit Wounds (2001)
Action | Comedy | Crime
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 5.3/10 X  

Orin Boyd, a tough cop in an inner-city precinct discovers a web of dirty cops and corruption.

Director: Andrzej Bartkowiak
Stars: Steven Seagal, DMX, Isaiah Washington
Action | Comedy | Crime
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 5.4/10 X  

Jordan White and Amy Blue, two troubled teens, pick up an adolescent drifter, Xavier Red. Together, the threesome embark on a sex and violence-filled journey through an America of psychos ... See full summary »

Director: Gregg Araki
Stars: James Duval, Rose McGowan, Johnathon Schaech
The Rookie (1990)
Action | Comedy | Crime
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 5.7/10 X  

Clint Eastwood plays a veteran cop who gets stuck with a rookie cop (Charlie Sheen) to chase down a German criminal (Raul Julia.)

Director: Clint Eastwood
Stars: Clint Eastwood, Charlie Sheen, Raul Julia
Wasabi (2001)
Action | Drama | Comedy
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 6.5/10 X  

Hubert is a French policeman with very sharp methods. After being forced to take 2 months off by his boss, who doesn't share his view on working methods, he goes back to Japan, where he ... See full summary »

Director: Gérard Krawczyk
Stars: Jean Reno, Ryôko Hirosue, Michel Muller
Police Story (1985)
Action | Comedy | Thriller
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.4/10 X  

A virtuous Hong Kong police officer must clear his good name when the drug lords he is after frame him for the murder of a dirty cop.

Director: Jackie Chan
Stars: Jackie Chan, Maggie Cheung, Brigitte Lin
Edit

Cast

Cast overview:
...
Tang Lung / Dragon
Nora Miao ...
...
Ping Ou Wei ...
Ho (as Paul Wei Ping-Ao)
Chung-Hsin Huang ...
'Uncle' Wang (as Wang Chung Hsin)
...
Bob
Ing-Sik Whang ...
Japanese Fighter
Di Chin ...
Ah Quen (as Ti Chin)
Tony Liu ...
Tony
Unicorn Chan ...
Jimmy
Malisa Longo ...
Italian Beauty
Fu Ching Chen ...
Tommy (as Tommy Chen)
Wu Ngan ...
Waiter
Robert Chen ...
Robert
Jon T. Benn ...
Thugs' Boss
Edit

Storyline

Tang Lung arrives in Rome to help his cousins in the restaurant business. They are being pressured to sell their property to the syndicate, who will stop at nothing to get what they want. When Tang arrives he poses a new threat to the syndicate, and they are unable to defeat him. The syndicate boss hires the best Japanese and European martial artists to fight Tang, but he easily finishes them off. The American martial artist Colt is hired and has a showdown with Tang in Rome's famous Colosseum. Written by Darryl Schneider <fish2@datanet.ab.ca>

Plot Summary | Add Synopsis

Plot Keywords:

fight | gangster | showdown | italy | colosseum | See more »

Taglines:

The Colosseum . . the battleground of Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris [Video Australia] See more »


Certificate:

R | See all certifications »

Parents Guide:

 »
Edit

Details

Country:

Language:

| |

Release Date:

30 December 1972 (Hong Kong)  »

Also Known As:

Return of the Dragon  »

Box Office

Budget:

$130,000 (estimated)
 »

Company Credits

Show detailed on  »

Technical Specs

Runtime:

Sound Mix:

Color:

(Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1
See  »
Edit

Did You Know?

Trivia

According to the Bruce Lee Documentary, this is Linda Lee Cadwell's (Bruce's wife) favorite of all her husband's films. See more »

Goofs

At the beginning of the movie, Bruce Lee is eating several different types of soups and several times he takes a spoonful of an orange colored soup and as he puts it into his mouth some dribbles on his chin. The soup he dribbles on his chin is white. See more »

Quotes

'Uncle' Wang: [betraying] I have to do this! I have to... muahahahahahahahahahahaaaaa...
See more »

Connections

Referenced in Fight Club (1999) See more »

Soundtracks

"As A Judgement"
(Colt's Theme)
by Ennio Morricone
See more »

Frequently Asked Questions

See more (Spoiler Alert!) »

User Reviews

Way Of The Dragon Review And General Feelings On Bruce's Death
23 July 2003 | by (London, England) – See all my reviews

The Way Of The Dragon had the potential to be Bruce's best film in my opinion but was bogged down by the dubbing and acting. But it still stands solid as one great Bruce Lee film and boasts the greatest fight scene ever in my opinion. Bruce plays Tang Lung who travels to Rome to help his family battle local gangsters who are trying to take over their resturaunt. Bruce almost plays a Charlie Chaplin type role here which would later be more fitting to Jackie Chan's slapstick style. Much like the Big Boss the first Bruce fight scene is way into the film but in my opinion this good because it creates a good build up, the nunchuka scene is second only to the one in Fist Of Fury or the uncut Game Of Death. The fight scene in the Roman Colliseum deserves the credit it gets because of one simple reason, its a simple fight, there are no gimmicks, sure its set in the colliseum and the fight is supposed to reflect two roman gladiators but there are no weapons and no sweet talk. It truly has epic scale. The thing that also makes this fight scene work is the end when Tang Lung out of respect covers Colt with his Karate jacket. There may have been better fights since on screen and I havn't seen many Hong Kong films with Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen etc but this is the first great one on one fight, therefore it set the standard.

There will indeed never be another Bruce Lee. I find it fascinating to imagine what Bruce would have done if he had lived, the 80's and 90's would have been very different if Arnie, Stallone, Wiilis, Seagal and Van Damme had Bruce to compete with, Bruce is sometimes critcised for being a bad actor, but i disagree, if anyone has seen his episodes of `Longstreet' or `Marlowe' they will see that Bruce could convincingly carry a dramatic scene given the right script and no dubbing and he oozed charisma, and he showed glimpses of good acting in Enter The Dragon.

Being a Bruce fan i kind of wish that Jet Li would do the films that bruce did or was planning on doing, Jet's early work in Honk Kong like the Shaolin Temple or more recent stuff like Fist Of Legend(remake of Fist Of Fury) and Once Upon A Time In China was very promising and it seemed he was the successor to Bruce but instead now he's doing crap in Hollywood with DMX and Jason Statham. Strangely the mediocre Lethal Weapon 4 is Jet's best Hollywood film, Maybe Jet should do a project with John Woo, it would be interesting and they'd probably get the best out of each other.


14 of 19 people found this review helpful.  Was this review helpful to you?

Message Boards

Recent Posts
Why kill Colt? nbreyfogle-1
Degrading of Karate chewruzhi
Chuck Norris' Broken Arm Navy_Jack
Bruce Lee is kinda cheap when he fights.. Yerkman
Why so damn difficult to believe? alexhunter11
What is Bruce Lee's Best film? G36C
Discuss The Way of the Dragon (1972) on the IMDb message boards »

Contribute to This Page

Create a character page for:
?