Prepare to ‘Awaken the Dragon’

Posted by Paige MacGregor (paige@filmschoolrejects.com) on August 22, 2007

Kurt Sutter, a writer and co-executive producer for the Fox television series The Shield, is teaming up with Warner Independent Pictures to direct a “remake” of the movie that single-handedly ignited the international kung-fu cinema craze and made Bruce Lee the ne’er replaceable god of martial arts movies: Warner Bros. Pictures’ 1973 Enter the Dragon.

Thankfully, Sutter isn’t trying to “remake” Enter the Dragon in the traditional sense of the word. Rather, as Cinematical writer Christopher Campbell comments, Sutter and Warner have updated and renamed ETD, making it just unrecognizable enough to placate Bruce Lee fans enraged at the thought of the original classic’s bastardization at the hands of the Hollywood motion picture industry.

While both the original and the “remake,” Awaken the Dragon, deal with underground martial arts fighting, the latter’s story bears virtually no resemblance to the original, appearing instead as a neo-noir about a lone FBI agent who pursues a rogue Shaolin monk into the bloody and unforgiving world of underground martial arts fight clubs.

Sutter told Variety of his feature film directorial debut: “I’m a huge noir fan, and this plot lends itself to the film I want to make.” He continued, “I wanted to set it in these underground fight clubs where the action is really raw and expose the brutality of Shaolin kung fu. This will be more ‘Raging Bull’ than ‘Crouching Tiger’ in its viciousness.”

At this point, the amateur director claims a desire to uncover an unknown martial artist to play the Shaolin monk, but rumor has it that Ong-bak star Tony Jaa (who is only well-known to hardcore martial arts film fans, I suppose) will play the part.

With regard to the FBI agent the Hollywood rumor mill has spit out Tom Cruise’s name as a possible candidate; although Cruise gave a stunning performance as Captain Nathan Algren in Edward Zwick’s The Last Samurai (2003), learning to wield a Samurai sword and being able to hold one’s own in an underground martial arts fight are two completely different animals. Some other names that have been thrown around for various parts in Awaken the Dragon include rapper 50 Cent (shoot me now) and WWF star John Cena (who I am categorically undecided about at the moment).

Awaken the Dragon is still in the pre-production phases of development and currently no release date has been set for the film.

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