Circle of Iron (2-Disc Special Edition)
by Richard Moore
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DVD details
Actor: David Carradine, Jeff CooperDirector: Richard Moore
Brand: RYKODISC
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; Spanish (Subtitled); English (Published), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; French (Published), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 97 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-05-29
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Blue Underground
Product features:
- The Adventure Epic Written By Bruce Lee His Dream Project He Would Never Live To See! At the height of his international fame, the legendary Bruce Lee along with his friend and student James Coburn and Oscar? -winning screenwriter Stirling Silliphant began to write what he believed would be the greatest achievement of his film career. Five years after his mysterious death, Lee s vision wou
DVD Reviews of Circle of Iron (2-Disc Special Edition)
DVD Review: Movie Review - Circle of Iron
Summary: 4 Stars
This cult classic will appeal to every fan of fantasy, martial arts adventure, and Zen mysticism. Circle of Iron blends all of these genres into an action classic. Can the young, inexperienced lone warrior find the mysterious Book of All Knowledge? To do this he must face numerous challenges along the way. David Carradine plays four roles and it looks like he has a ball in every one of them. The conclusion is rewarding as all the Zen-like questions are ultimately explained. Truly worth the price, your friends will thank you for getting them to watch this classic.DVD Review: a good select, only miss the german language
Summary: 4 Stars
Hi,
the product is o.k., I`d like to buy some with more languages, specialy german, because my english is not so good. It`s a pitty, that it doesn`t exist in this marketplace.
greetings -- lothar
DVD Review: Not terribly profound but an engaging oddity
Summary: 3 Stars
Whatever his personal habits, David Carradine must have been the bane of Bruce Lee's life and afterlife. After losing out on the lead role in Kung Fu despite the show being developed as a starring vehicle for him, if Lee weren't dead by the time The Silent Flute aka Circle of Iron was made, the casting of Carradine in the multiple roles intended for Lee in one of his abandoned pet projects might just have killed him. Or maybe he simply wouldn't have cared anymore. Still, it's a wonder Carradine didn't turn up playing Lee's part in Game of Death as well.
Originally written by Lee with James Coburn and Stirling Silliphant in 1970 until Lee's ego took over and he fell out with his collaborators and dropped out of a post-Fists of Fury attempt to revive the project because "you can't afford me anymore," the original version was intended as a mixture of hardcore Zen philosophy and scrotum scrunching hardcore violence that bore only passing resemblance to the film that finally got made. As other reviewers have noted, the heavily revised script is an attempt to explain Zen philosophy by people who don't really understand it, simplifying it and leavening it with humour to try and make it more accessible for the American grindhouse crowd. Well, one man's philosophy is another man's comedy...
Jeff Cooper, who looks a bit like Michael Ironside on steroids with a lot more hair, is Cord the Seeker, a disgraced fighter with more brawn than brain seeking the right to search for Zetan and his Book of Enlightenment. Yes, it's one of those films. Okay, Cooper looks a bit old for this seeking lark, but he's game, but to get to Zetan he has to pass many challenges that all involve David Carradine in many guises - blind flute player, monkey king, hospitable kung fu fighting wife-swapper and death himself. Along the way he discovers humility, wisdom, that abstinence is as bad as excess, that monkeys are cowardly egotists, that you should break good looking children's noses to stop their beauty turning them into tyrants and that it's okay if your girlfriend gets crucified the morning after the night before just as long as you learn a fortune cookie parable about the nature of love in the process.
The fights aren't especially impressive, neither particularly well choreographed nor excitingly shot, while Carradine's martial arts skills are surprisingly pallid in many scenes: his fight using his flute is a rather lethargic affair with none of the rather slow blows having the kind of impact and force Lee could have brought to them. If anything, he seems to just be tapping the stuntmen rather gently. The few star names in the cast - Christopher Lee, Roddy McDowall, Eli Wallach - are little more than cameos, though Wallach is an absolute joy in the film's most notorious scene as a man who has been dissolving his penis in a vat of oil for ten years to rid himself of the temptation of the pleasures of the flesh, as you do. With a playful, matter-of-fact absurdity worthy of Lewis Carroll, it's completely bonkers and funny in all the right ways. It's also nothing to do with Lee, Coburn or Silliphant but part of Stanley Mann's rewrite that added lots of dialogue and moved the story from the modern-day East to a mythical kingdom `that never was and always is' that looks a lot like Yugoslavia with better weather and the odd desert but is in fact Israel. Still, as you may expect from a film directed by a former cinematographer (Richard Moore), it looks good and has an occasionally fine Bruce Smeaton score that sounds at times like a dress rehearsal for his haunting work on Iceman. And while it's one of those films that is easy to mock, it's also one of those films that, even while it really isn't very good, is still just offbeat enough to make it hard to dislike.
Blue Underground's 2-disc DVD is an impressive package, with a plethora of interviews - the most interesting an audio one with Stirling Silliphant - and the original Lee/Coburn/Silliphant script. The trailers are also revealing: the US distributors tried to sell it as an action film while the international trailer pitches it as `the first mystical martial arts adventure' as much to the arthouse crowd as action fans.
DVD Review: Martial arts/enlightenment
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie based on a story by martial arts great Bruce Lee, is interesting,informative, and thought provoking. Having practiced martial arts myself, it struck a chord with me. Not so much, the fighting scenes in the movie, but the reasons for them. The movies ending was amazing to me, and even my wife, who is not into martial arts 'stuff' was impressed with this thought provoker. DVD Review: Truly Weird
Summary: 2 Stars
A project conceived by Bruce Lee and James Coburn. Carradine appears in a number of different parts -- in that aspect it reminds me of Kirk Douglas in the LIST OF ADRIAN MESSENGER. Quirky, odd with a lead who couldn't act his way out of a wet paper bag. For those who collect such things.
Description of Circle of Iron (2-Disc Special Edition)
The Adventure Epic Written By Bruce Lee - His Dream Project He Never Lived To See!At the height of his international fame, the legendary Bruce Lee - along with his friend and student James Coburn and Oscar?? -winning screenwriter Stirling Silliphant - began to write what he believed would be the greatest achievement of his film career. Five years after his mysterious death, Lee's vision would finally be realized. David Carradine (KILL BILL), Christopher Lee (THE LORD OF THE RINGS), Roddy McDowall (PLANET OF THE APES) and Eli Wallach (THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY) star in this acclaimed cult hit that brings Lee's personal philosophy to the screen with a still-potent combination of mysticism, humor and martial arts mayhem.
CIRCLE OF IRON - also know as THE SILENT FLUTE - has now been remastered in stunning High Definition and remixed in bone-crunching 6.1 DTS-ES and 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround EX. This new 2-Disc "Kick Ass" Edition also includes 1?? hours of newly produced Extras!
Bruce Lee and James Coburn conceived the story for this unusual blend of fantasy, martial arts adventure, and Zen mysticism that should please cult-movie collectors and action aficionados with a taste for the offbeat. The bland but serviceable Jeff Cooper stars as a lone warrior who sets out to find the mysterious Book of All Knowledge. He faces numerous physical challenges on his journey, chief among them David Carradine in four roles (including a half-man, half-monkey), as well as numerous philosophical conundrums. While the dialogue by Sterling Silliphant (In the Heat of the Night) and Stanley Mann (Eye of the Needle) occasionally teeters into self-parody, the action and pace rarely lags, and the fine supporting cast, which includes Christopher Lee, Eli Wallach, and Roddy McDowall, lends a degree of gravity to the proceedings. One wonders how the film would have played with Lee in the cast (it had been a pet project of his for years, but was completed years after his death), but the end result is certainly watchable and entertaining. Blue Underground's DVD includes a wealth of extras, including a typically laid-back interview with Carradine, commentary by director Richard Moore, trailers and TV spots, an alternate title sequence, and, most intriguing of all, Lee's original script with Coburn and Silliphant (accessible only via DVD-ROM). --Paul Gaita
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