Bruce

I still love The Big Boss. The film boasts a perfect mise en scène: an ice factory in Thailand. The weather is hot and the men are trying to stay cool, Bruce Lee most of all. After a brief scuffle at the beginning he holds it in for the better part of the film before erupting into, well, Bruce Lee. He's a slow burner, like Clint's Man With No Name. He's imperfect, tested, and prevails.

This is what heroes used to be: stoic, principled, tested -- always to failure -- but coming back at the end when their true self is realised. The storyline is likewise classically simple: starting quiet and driving to a climax. Now movies start big, flounder, panic and distract with gewgaws until arriving at some legal definition of an ending: boxes ticked, pulses never raised.

The Fast And Furious series is the closest thing to a modern equivalent of the Hong Kong martial arts movies. A gallant camaraderie, tight budgets and cheap locations, a cast that can laugh at itself and shonky set pieces that work in spite of their ludicrousness because you're in the heroes' headspace and you want them to prevail. The female characters are equally noble. Maria Yi is the moral compass in The Big Boss just as Gal Gadot is in Fast 6.