The Way of the Dragon (1973, Hong Kong)
A Chinese man, Tang Lung (played by Bruce Lee) has to fly to Rome to see his relatives. When he gets there he discovers that they are being pressurised by the mafia to sell up the restaurant that they run, and Tang Lung uses his martial arts skills to defend them. This culminates in a martial arts fight in the Colosseum, in which an American martial artist Colt (Chuck Norris) is pitted against him. There are a lot of stray cats in the Colosseum, and two of them seem to be spectators during the fight.
This film is sometiems listed becasue a lieutenant to the mob chief is a flamboyant gay man called Ho, played by Ping Ao Wei, but he isn't really transgender.
However, earlier in the film when Tang Lung lands in Italy at first, he has great difficulty choosing something to eat from a menu -- a neat reversal of the old joke about someone in a Chinese restaurant ordering an item that is the printer's name. The waitress seems to me to be a man in drag. However, the credits only list six main characters and I have been unable to identify this actor's identity.
As is often the case with Hong Kong martial arts films, there are several alternative titles:
Meng long guo jiang;
Fury of the Dragon;
Return of the Dragon; and
Revenge of the Dragon.
HF March 2008
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The Way of the Dragon
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