Game of Death (and action movies in general)

You have, of course, heard of this film.

Lee wrote the script himself, and took great pride in it. The plot of the movie is actually better than most martial-arts films, which is horrifying to think about.

In the movie, Lee is approached by gangsters to fight his way to the top of an aincient pagoda and steal a vast treasure. The gangsters can't use guns because they are forbidden in the temple, so they need Lee's fighting skills to rob the pagoda without breaking the law.

Lee is a good man, so of course he can't do it. Bt the gangsters kidnap his wife and child, so he has no choice. Studies have shown that female relatives of action heros have an average life span of six weeks.

So Lee and a couple of extras fight their way through five increasingly tough fighters in the pagoda on their way to the treasure. This is where we come to the money shot. Bruce motherfucking Lee vs. Kareem-Abdul Jabbar.

It's incredibly stupid, of course. (Though remember, not as stupid as the average action film) but it doesn't matter. The Lee-Jabbar fight is the coolest thing that has ever happaned. It is the reason for the big bang. Everything that has happened since the fight has just been a waste of everyone's time.
Which raises the question; why do action movies even have plots? The dialogue and acting is always laughible, so why bother? What would be wrong with a film that's nothing but two hours of men beating the shit out of each other without explanation?

Let's not kid ourselves, no one watches a Chuck Norris movie to reinforce their anti-daughter kidnapping moral position. Can we please cut the bullshit? I think the honesty of a dialogue-free male snuff film would be very liberating.

Of course, there are those who insist that every movie has to have a good guy and a bad guy, and the good guy has to win. Fine, we'll give them different colered shirts or something. Otherwise, straight to the body count baby.