The Big Boss (1971)

Bruce Lee's first starring role in a Hong Kong film, The Big Boss was a sensation across Southeast Asia, breaking box office records in Hong Kong in a single week. It established the template for the "Bruce Lee film": a working-class hero who endures injustice until the breaking point, then unleashes devastatingly precise violence on corrupt power. Lee plays a Thai ice factory worker confronting a heroin trafficking operation. Raw, visceral, and electrifying.