Dialogue: jaw-dropping. Harrison is no 'new man', to say the least: in a patio scene, he and Bruce are served tea by a female agent: Bruce: "Smells nice". Richard: "So does she...". Just one lowpoint of scripting, they come so thick and fast it's hard to keep up. "I'll have a Coke" "Sorry we're out of Coke". (pause) "OK, I'll have a beer". One of the oddest parts of the film doesn't involve dialogue: the writer crowbars in an expo at the Macua yacht club, where real-life celebs Jack Klugman (Quincy) and Jane Seymour are swanning around. Bruce actually lines up to shake Quincy's hand!!

Similarity to real Bruce: must try harder. You could easily distinguish between the two due to (a) Le's Johnny Ramone barnet, and (b) the utter facial mismatch. He does a few token Brucie bounce steps between moves, but he may as well be copying Bruce Forsyth. Bruce Le has arguably the best-spelled rip off of Bruce Lee's surname; after all it's missing one out of the two e's. However he loses a point for not rhyming with 'Lee', like 'Bruce Li'.

Fights: generally pretty disappointing, the 'one v many' stuff is poorly staged and makes little use of the environment. Two absurd fights stand out: Bruce's fight againt a bull at the bullfights, where instead of simply making good his escape over the barrier when he has the chance, he wrestles the 'bull's' (i.e. model's) horns and then unleashes some sidekicks on our bovine friend. Later Richard Harrison, who has been badly beaten offscreen (probably due to budget cuts) turns up at martial-arts-school-processing-plant-island punch drunk, and proceeds to beat up rubbish black-belts with thumps and shin-kicks.

There are, however, three good fights: a sadly short Hwang vs Bolo Yeung match, which should have been a "superkicker vs muscle guy" epic. Bruce's final three fights are all one-on-one's and get progressively better until his finale against Hwang, who, as ever is the man to watch. This climaxes in the worst on screen car crash explosion ever, with an impact which would only raise mild glances in a town-centre car park.

Title relevance to plot: Tenuous. There's undoubtedly a Challenge, but it is neither set not undertaken by a Tiger.

Overall: 2 kicks out of 5, some good camp fun and decent fights if you get that far.

The plot: an ex-mob mother is ostracised due to her love of a rival yakuza. He returns to Japan, leaving her to care for their autistic daughter (Zin) who is brought up in a Muay Thai training school. When mother falls ill, Zin and her tubby chum discover an accounts book of people that owe her mother money--they do not realize this a loan shark book from her mob days. Zin has copied the Muay Thai techniques from the school, and avidly consumes Tony Jaa's movies and violent Playstation games.

And so cue a series of fights with the debtors--all of which are set in different factories: ice, packing, meat. Finally the old boss and his transvestite(!) gang get wind of this and we end with two showdowns: one involving the returned Yakuza dad in a restaurant, and then spilling out to the city rooftops and balconies for the final showdown.

And she's called Chocolate because she collects M&M's.

Treatment: now, this has caused quite a split among the kung fu forums. As mentioned, Zin is autistic (apologies if this is a generalization) and her mother is struck with (presumably) leukemia. In my opinion both conditions are treated respectfully, and (as far as I can see) realistically. Zin's mood swings and perception of the world are well realized. Of course, this doesn't have the depth of, say, "The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night" or "Rain Man", but its both good enough for this context and touching in its own right. The point that she could not possibly be such a good fighter without formal training is, well, pointless: "Ong-Bak" and "Tom Yun Goong" have equally ludicrous plots but are just as exciting.

Fights: again, controversial: some believe these to be slickly edited to make JeeJa Yanin look better, and that she is merely flexible/acrobatic with no real technique. I completely disagree; whilst I'm no big city martial arts expert, I have done five years of attempting to pull off similar kick combos and am not close to the speed and accuracy she displays. The combos are varied and imaginative, making very good use of kicks/elbows/ad-hoc weapons as well as the scenery. The stunts are superb; especially in the end fight on the side of a building (Harold Lloyd would be proud). Only let down is the swordplay sequence, which is just as clumsy as the one in "Kill Bill".

The outtakes show several meaty smacks in the face, the stunt team really earned their keep.

Overall: 4.5.out of 5, another modern day classic from Thailand with plenty of action, and nice to see that plot complexity is improving.