Metacritic reviews

Way Of The Dragon is memorable purely for its final Coliseum-set showdown between Lee and Chuck Norris (at the time the holder of countless US and World Karate championships). This is the film that provides just about the best combat sequence ever shot.

The film’s appeal rests almost entirely on his fight scene with his student, Chuck Norris — arguably the best one ever captured on celluloid.

Far from a perfect movie, or even Lee's best, but it shows that he may have developed into an original and talented filmmaker.

The film has the roughness you might expect in a first directorial effort, and also a perhaps unexpected leaning towards comedy. Lee makes great play on his character as the country boy without weapons confronting the denizens of the technologically-powerful West and winning hands down.

Dragon is noteworthy more for the martial arts action than for narrative, which is all its fans probably want anyway.

This sort of stuff is magnificently silly, and Lee, to give him credit, never tried to rise above it. If a movie like this were directed seriously, it would be a disaster.

Unlike its predecessor, Enter the Dragon, which was praised as a well-made movie, this picture is dreadfully slow and feeble whenever the cast isn't fighting. So you yearn for each battle, just as you wait impatiently for the songs or dances in a tedious musical.