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Rating:

6


AKA: The Silent Flute

Year of release: 1978

Genre: action

Director: Richard Moore

Action director: Joe Lewis

Producers: Paul Maslansky, Sandy Howard

Story: Bruce Lee, James Coburn, Sterling Silliphant

Writers: Sterling Silliphant, Stanley Mann

Cinematography: Ronnie Taylor

Editor: Ernest Walter

Music: Bruce Smeaton

Stars: David Carradine, Jeff Cooper, Christopher Lee, Roddy McDowall, Anthony De Longis, Eli Wallach, Earl Maynard, Erica Creer

Rated R for mild violence and brief nudity


DVD Information

Manufacturer: Blue Underground

Picture format: anamorphic widescreen

Sound format: Dolby 5.1, DTS 6.1

Languages: English

Subtitles: Spanish

Extras: interviews, featurette, trailers, photo gallery, script

Notes: For a nearly thirty year old film, this looks and sounds great. The extras (featured on a second disc) are actually interesting and informative for the most part and worth watching.


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Circle of Iron

Circle of Iron

After Bruce Lee's death, there was a flurry of films supposedly "endorsed" or "inspired" by him. Of course, most of these were merely badly-made rip-offs of Lee's existing movies with a look-a-like thrown in. Circle of Iron (aka The Silent Flute) is a bit different, in that the story was actually (at least) partially concieved by Lee himself. Though, judging from the results, it's hard to tell just how much of the finished product actually fits with Lee's vision.

The story centers around a warrior named Cord (Jeff Cooper), who loses his village's tournament to see who will seek a powerful fighter named Zetan (Christopher Lee). Cord decides to head out anyway, and soon meets up with a mysterious blind man (David Carradine), who guides him along the trials blocking the way to Zetan. At first brash and bold, Cord soon learns that force is not always the best way to solve problems, and that the legend of Zetan holds more questions than answers.

Circle of Iron

Now, this plot sounds like it would fit in perfectly fine with a Bruce Lee movie -- if it had been filmed in Asia as he originally intended. The producers wanted to set their movie apart from the flood of kung fu films flooding theatres in the late 1970's. So they changed to shooting location to Israel and gave the story a more "fantastic" feel. What does that mean? Apparently, David Carradine dressed up in monkey makeup. Really bad looking monkey makeup.

The main problem with the approach the film-makers took is that the producers were working with a tiny budget -- this is definitely not Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, or even Clash of the Titans territory here. And so everything looks terribly cheap, even with Israel's stunning landscapes providing an impressive backdrop. Try as they might, the film-makers just couldn't concieve a believeable and interesting world for the characters to interact in. It's hard to get lost in a "fantasy" movie when everything is so obviously fake.

Circle of Iron

It's also hard to take Circle of Iron too seriously with Jeff Cooper in the lead role. First off, the role of Cord -- a headstrong and naive man -- seems to call for someone younger, not a forty-something with the beginnings of a receding hairline. Also, he's just not physically impressive enough to be taken seriously as a great warrior -- not only is he too skinny, he's far too clumsy-looking in his fight scenes. Finally, Cooper just isn't that good of an actor. Circle of Iron was, not surprisingly, one of his only films, landed after years of appearing in bit parts on TV shows.

Despite these problems, Circle of Iron is still fairly enjoyable in a 70's cheeseball sort of way. It moves at a fast clip, has a decent amount of action, and David Carradine's performance is actually quite good. Sure, die-hard Bruce Lee fans expecting this to be some sort of holy grail of Lee's legacy will most likely be disappointed. But keep an open mind (and perhaps a few beers on hand) and you should have a good time with Circle of Iron.

Circle of Iron

Note: Circle of Iron, despite not being a box-office success, has proven to be influential in the years after its' release. Robert Rodriguez used the trailer in From Dusk Till Dawn and Quentin Tarantino reprised Carradine's "blind man" character in the Kill Bill movies. Shades of the film can also be seen in popular video games, most notably the Mortal Kombat series, in which one of the bosses, Shang Tsung, is named after one of the characters in the film.