Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1994)

Title: Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993)

Director: Rob Cohen

Cast: Jason Scott Lee, Lauren Holly

Review:

Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story is a biographical film based on the book written by Linda Lee Cadwell, Bruce Lee’s wife. The book was called Bruce Lee: The Man Only I Knew. It’s good to keep that in mind because the film is told mostly from the point of view of Linda Lee; something I rather enjoyed about this movie. It’s a love story, and a very engaging one. Bruce Lee is idolized by millions across the world, he truly is an example of what we can achieve when we commit our minds to achieve a certain goal; for this I’ve always admired Bruce Lee. He was focused, disciplined and determined, something we should all aspire to be in life. That plus he had such charisma, such a glow, it’s no surprise he became the icon that he became. Did this film do justice to the hero?

Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story starts out when Lee was in China, dreaming of coming to America. He gets into a brawl over a girl and ends up having to leave his country in order to escape the authorities, a situation he has no problems with because he loves the American culture, he loves movies and James Dean. After he arrives to America, we see how he goes from dishwasher at a Chinese restaurant to college student, to karate teacher, to becoming a husband and a father and finally, a powerhouse movie star. But one thing is always hounding Bruce Lee and that’s the demon that’s always followed his family. Will he ever confront his own personal demons? Will he always live in fear of them?

The film was directed by Rob Cohen, a director who’s never really wowed me with anything he has done. He’s the guy behind Dragonheart (1996), xXx (2002), Fast and the Furious (2001) and Stealth (2005), not the greatest bunch of films, watchable sure, but good or great, nope. This is why Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story is a surprise to me; it is without a doubt Cohen’s finest film. Unfortunately, he’s never truly done anything as good as this. But that’s okay, hey, at least he’s got this one great film on his repertoire, and what a beautiful film it is. It’s purely entertaining, while still managing to tell us Bruce Lee’s story and his fantastic rise to fame. I loved how the film ends up being a film about films, we get to see Lee work his way through all the Hollywood backstabbing. We see his devastation when they give the role that was supposed to be his for the television show Kung Fu, to David Caradine. In retrospective this was probably a good thing, had he ended up as a television star, maybe he wouldn’t have gone on to make the great films he made. And speaking of Lee’s films, on Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story we get to see him on the set of The Big Boss (1971) and Enter the Dragon (1973), which is quite fun, I loved how Rob Cohen played around with these familiar images and situations, especially those scenes that take place in the mirror room on Enter the Dragon. 

The film is told from the point of view of his wife, Linda Lee, the film is after all based on her book. Having Linda Lee give her input to this production is a wonderful asset to the production because she was the closest to him throughout his entire life. She was there through his college years, she was there through the first time he opens his karate schools, she was there when he made his first television show, his first movie. She was always there, so her side of the story is probably the most complete side of the tale. What I also enjoyed was how romantic the whole film is, the way Bruce and Linda fell in love is a beautiful love story that broke through racial barriers, they had to deal with Linda’s parents rejecting Bruce over him being Chinese. I’m so glad that their love for each other was stronger than racism; it was a triumph to humanity. It also helps that Lauren Holly and Jason Scott Lee had wonderful on screen chemistry. 

The role of Bruce Lee was at one point offered to Brandon Lee, Bruce Lee’s son. Unfortunately, Brandon declined to play his father. I wonder how Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story would have turned out had Brandon Lee taken the role because Brandon Lee turned out to be a wonderful actor; he truly blossomed as a performer when he made The Crow (1994), his final film. Not to mention all the input he could have brought to the role, after all, Bruce Lee was his father. It’s interesting to note that had Brandon Lee accepted to play his father, then maybe he wouldn’t have died while making The Crow, since both movies where shot on the same year. Sadly Brandon Lee was accidentally shot while shooting The Crow less than two months before the theatrical release of Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. This is a tragic real life story; Brandon Lee’s death only adds fuel to that myth about Bruce Lee’s family being cursed, which is just silly non sense. So instead of Brandon Lee, the production ended up using Jason Scott Lee to play the role of Bruce, which was an excellent choice in my book, Jason Scott Lee not only has the look, he also brought that physicality to the role. He captured to perfection the mannerisms, the intensity and the charismatic persona of Bruce Lee.

The only thing I don’t like about the film is that it takes some artistic liberties with Bruce Lee’s life story. The film has many discrepancies with Lee’s real life story. For example, in the film, they lead you to believe that the Chinese are angry that he is teaching Karate to the Americans, so he fights with these Chinese dudes who end up breaking his back. In real life the story is substantially different, this fighting match did take place, but it was in Lee’s own Karate school and not in some temple like in the film. And even worse, Bruce Lee actually won that fight! In the movie they make you believe that he loses this fight and that one of the fighters purposely injures his back. This was not true either; his back was injured not by an angered fighter, but because of a weight lifting incident, so Lee’s back injury was self inflicted! In the film they make you think he actually managed to see his book ‘Tao of Jeet Kune Do’ published, in real life the book was printed posthumously. And speaking of his death, the film leaves it as something of a mystery, when in fact he died because of an allergic reaction to a muscle relaxant called ‘Equagesic’, which apparently worsened a condition he had been suffering from called, cerebral edema, basically, excess fluid in the brain. For the most part the film tells Lee’s story like it is, but it takes artistic liberties to make things more dramatic or visually interesting, which is to be expected on any biographical film.

In the end, the film ends up being very inspirational. It’s one of those movies that makes you want to do something with your life after seeing it. It makes you want to believe in yourself, it sends out that idea that if you put your mind to it, you truly can accomplish anything. Linda Lee says she’d rather remember her husband for the way he lived his life, than for his death and I have to say I agree, the guy lived an amazing life overcoming racism, personal fears and demons. The whole demon part of the story is where the film kind of dives into the fantastic because we actually get to see him fighting against this giant Samurai demon. This is yet another scene in which the film takes artistic liberties, but I didn’t mind because it is all kinds of cool to see Bruce Lee fighting a giant Samurai demon, plus it’s just so symbolic of all the struggles he went through to get to where he got. I guess life is like that, you always feel like there’s something hounding you, trying to stop you from achieving your goals, but Lee fought those and won in my opinion, the guy went on to become a legend in life and death. Bruce Lee remains one of my personal heroes, he exceled at what he did and always aimed higher, trying to be all that he could be.

Rating: 5 out of 5     

    

The Big Boss (1971)

Title: The Big Boss (1971)

Director: Wei Lo, Chia Hsiang Wu

Starring: Bruce Lee, James Tien

Review:

I recently acquired a Bruce Lee boxed set called “The Bruce Lee Ultimate Collection” and have been catching up on some Bruce Lee films that I had never seen. This boxed set includes Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon, Game of Death I and II and the film I’ll be reviewing today: The Big Boss. Bruce Lee films can be a mixed bunch; some are excellent, like Fist of Fury which still remains my favorite of the Bruce Lee flicks that I have seen. Some of them are so-so like Way of the Dragon, which is only cool because of Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris’s climactic fight sequence in the Roman Coliseum. And some are downright embarrassing, like the god awful Game of Death, which features very little of Bruce Lee because he died before he could finish it. I was beginning to think that maybe Id seen all the good ones, and that only the bad ones were left. That is until I saw The Big Boss. It’s one of his best films ever!

Cheng Chao An (Bruce Lee) has just recently moved from China to Thailand with his cousins and is looking to get himself a job. Lucky for him and his cousins, they get a job at the local ice factory. During their tenure there, one of Cheng’s cousins (Brother Hsiu) discovers that the ice plant is actually a big front for drug smuggling. When Brother Hsiu is offered the opportunity to get in on the drug smuggling action and denies, he is killed. Cheng and the rest of the cousins don’t know that he has been killed and begin to ask around for him. When Cheng realizes what has happened, he starts going up the ladder until he finally comes face to face with the titular “Big Boss”, the leader of the drug smugglers! This Big Boss must pay! His Big Boss face will have to meet with Bruce Lee’s Big Fist in a Big Freaking Way! It’s a blood bath of epic proportions!

The Big Boss was Bruce Lee’s first starring role. He’d done smaller films, playing secondary characters, and even some television (he even appeared on that campy Batman T.V. show from the 70s!) but The Big Boss was the first film where he had top billing. Of course, after the world got a taste of what Bruce Lee was capable of, he became a star almost over night. The Big Boss became the biggest money maker in Hong Kong, only to be topped by his following film, Fist of Fury. These two films deserved their success, for both of them are the best of Bruce Lee’s filmology, in my humble opinion. They show that raw, angry, deadly side of Bruce Lee. On both of these films, Bruce Lee demonstrates a level of fury and anger that you just can’t see on any other one of his films. It’s this intensity, this hatred; you have to see it to understand it.

But speaking of Bruce Lee’s intense on screen persona; on The Big Boss, he is deadlier then ever! This is the Bruce Lee film with the biggest body count. On this movie you kill his family…you die! Often times, Bruce Lee uses different martial arts weapons to kick ass. He usually ends up using his famous nunchucks. But on The Big Boss, he doesn’t use them at all. Instead, his weapons of choice on this film are knives! On this movie Bruce Lee slices, dices and stabs his way through the bad guys! And it’s not an off camera thing, Lee literally stabs people to death on numerous occasions! We even get some blood spraying up after one of the stabs, which is something Id never seen on any Bruce Lee film, usually his kills are deadly yet bloodless. I think it’s safe to say that this is Bruce Lee most violent film, at least in terms of graphic violence. In fact, this movie was so graphic with its violence that it was heavily edited in China. They had to excise a couple of the too gruesome for the movie screen sequences. There’s a scene where Lee stabs a villain…with his fingers!!

Obviously, this is purely a revenge film, where Lee has to avenge the death of his family. I believe the body count for Bruce Lee on this movie is somewhere between 13 and 15, depending if you count to possible drownings. The bad guys are pretty deadly as well, they kill a heck of a lot of people, which is really what gets Bruce Lee’s character angered. When that rage is released, you are in for a treat! There’s this one scene where Lee enters the Big Boss’s mansion, and he enters eating a bag of chips for some reason. After he evades a whole bunch of deadly rabid dogs that literally jump at him from all directions, he kicks a couple of hoodlum’s asses and then continues eating his chips, as if nothing had just happened; which I thought was absolutely hilarious.

The martial arts choreography on this movie is really good only when Bruce Lee is in the fight. When this film got started, it was originally made to star James Tien, but Bruce Lee’s performance wowed the producers so they decided to switch the main character to Lee. So, Lee doesn’t do much fighting until somewhere around half of the film. When he finally gets his chance to kick some ass, that’s when the movie shifts into high gear. Sometimes, the martial arts moves border on unrealistic by having characters jump to unrealistic heights. For example, whenever Lee wants to go into a house, he doesn’t open the gates, he effortlessly jumps over them. Fortunately, most of the fights are kept pretty realistic.

Without a doubt, one of Lee’s best films. Its no wonder that after this one, he shot straight to the top and became such a huge star. If you’re in the mood to see where Lee started and if your in the mood to see some vicious martial arts action, The Big Boss is the way to go.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Game of Death (1978)

Title: Game of Death (1978)

Director: Robert Clouse

Review:

Game of Death was the film that Bruce Lee was in the middle of making, when he was suddenly offered to work in his first American production entitled Enter the Dragon. Bruce Lee didn’t want to let the opportunity of making a big American production such as Enter the Dragon pass, so he decided to leave Game of Death unfinished. His plan was to film Enter the Dragon with the Americans, then return and finish filming Game of Death. Problem is that Lee died while making Enter the Dragon, so Game of Death was never finished. What’s a director to do? The main star of your unfinished film has died! And they had only filmed the ending!

Well, what they did was they brought in Robert Clouse, the same American director who had filmed Lee’s Enter the Dragon to try and finish the film. This is where the story gets really ugly for me because what they did was they wrote this whole other film around the footage they had already shot. The result is less then stellar. They did this story about a martial artist who is making action movies named Billy Lo. Billy Lo has gotten super famous as a movie star, and for some reason has decided to go up against the mafia. The mafia decide to kill him while he is shooting a scene for one of his movies. Will they kill him? Will Billy Lo win his fight against the racketeering mafia?

Truth be told this movie almost completely sucks. There are a few things that work, but they are so few and far between that they don’t save the movie. The good stuff is swamped in the middle of all the crap. What’s so crappy about this movie? Well, for starters, there’s some bad taste involved in wanting to exploit Bruce Lee after his death. They had almost no footage of Bruce Lee shot for this movie. The only thing they had was a couple of scenes with Bruce Lee fighting his way through the tower of death. So they decided to film this whole other film, with a double standing in as Bruce Lee and then just splice that footage of the real Lee somewhere near the ending of the film. Problem with this is that you spend the whole movie thinking you are going to see Bruce Lee at some point, but you never do! All you see is this pretty pathetic stunt double imitating Bruce Lee’s movements and facial expressions, but never fully achieving it. Second thing that makes this movie so hard to watch is that they use a lot of filler to extend the films running time. As a result, we get a bunch of people we care nothing about talking a lot of unnecesary crap.

I had no idea what a travesty Game of Death was going to turn out to be. It’s almost an insult to any true Bruce Lee fan. The movie starts out by showing us a couple of minutes of Bruce Lee’s Way of the Dragon. You know that last climactic scene where he fights off Chuck Noris in the Roman coliseum? Well, that’s how the movie starts out, with showing you this whole fight from Way of the Dragon. Then, we are introduced to Billy Lo, the guy playing Bruce Lee. Only he isn’t Bruce Lee! You can tell in various ways that the king of martial arts movies was nowhere to be seen. First up, they use this really crappy visual effect where they simply super impose Bruce Lee’s face over the doubles face! It was so pathetic its beyond description. If felt like an episode of South Park or something. Then, the double who plays Bruce Lee looks absolutely nothing like him!! I mean, what did producers think? Did they think that all Chinese people look alike and that no one was going to notice that THAT actor was not Bruce Lee? Come on dudes! It was pathetic.

For a moment, you think that you are only going to see this double acting as Bruce Lee for a short while, and that at some point, the REAL Bruce Lee was going to take over. Well, sorry to disappoint you guys, but you don’t. You don’t get to see Bruce Lee during most of this film. Only the last 20 minutes or so include the real footage they shot of Lee fighting Kareem Abdul Jabar, and another deadly warrior from the Tower of Death. And of course, these last twenty minutes are awesome because we get to see “The Man” in action. You can’t help but wonder how this movie would have turned out had Bruce Lee been alive! But as it is, we get a Bruce Lee double through out most of the film hiding his face in shadows, wearing fake beards and mustaches, wearing these big ass sun glasses and by giving us his back so we cant clearly see he is not BruceLee. I kept telling my friends "when Bruce Lee is on the screen...you will know!" Because Lee had that kind of aura and charisma. As soon as he is on the screen, he lights it up with energy.

There’s a couple of things that make this movie “special”. One of them is when Sammo Hung appears in the film. Sammo Hung is actually a well accomplished martial artist, with many films on his repertoire. He looked so young on this film! Hung has a couple of pounds on him; he isn’t super skinny like Bruce Lee. This dude is fat, but boy can he move! By the way, Sammo Hung himself choreographed many of the martial arts sequences in this film, which is really what makes some of the fighting sequences just a bit more watchable, but you still don’t feel like you are watching that energy and intensity that Bruce Lee puts into his performances and his fights. But anyhows, Sammo Hung appears in a scene when some characters walk into this coliseum where there’s a fighting match going on, and for a couple of minutes, the film focuses on the fight that is going on in the ring. That’s when we get to see Sammo Hung shine. The scene has nothing to do with the film, and its only there to let Sammo show his fighting ability to the world, but it was entertaining to watch Sammo do his thing. He certainly is one of the highlights of the film.

Of course, the main reason to get this movie is simply to watch Bruce Lee do his thing on the last half of the film. When Bruce Lee finally walks into the movie (I mean the real guy, not that stunt double that plays him) you simply know it. You simply feel it. He's got that energy! 100 killowats of pure concentrated ass kicking energy walk on to the screen when Lee finally shows up. He displays once again why he was the best guy with those nunchucks! He has a face off with Kareem Abdul Jabbar which is awesome because Bruce Lee looks so tiny next to Jabbar's towering persona! Its a odd fight, but one that Lee quickly turns to his favor by getting a choke hold on Kareem! Awesome sequence, too bad such a cool sequence is in such a crappy movie!

Another thing that makes this movie interesting is the fact that it’s a kind of prophetic! Why? Well, for one, on Game of Death, Bruce Lee is playing a character who is a martial artist who has suddenly become a famous film star. So basically, we can infer that Billy Lo, the main character on Game of Death is really representative of Bruce Lee himself. So this is one of those films where they are making a movie, within the movie. In one scene, Billy Lo is afraid he will get shot while making his film. But he shoots the movie anyways. An actor that is supposed to use a prop gun, ends up using a real gun, and replaces the blank bullets with real ones! So on one scene where Billy is supposed to get shot with blanks, he gets shot for real! Everyone thinks he is acting, but Billy Lo was actually shot in the head for real! What I found most bizarre about that whole scene is that it was kind of prophetic on how Bruce Lee’s own son, Brandon Lee, died a few years down the line while making The Crow (1994). Someone put a real bullet in the prop gun they were going to shoot with on a certain scene, and kablooey! Brando Lee was no more. But I thought it was extremely eerie how, on Game of Death a film that came years before Brandon Lees tragic death, his death was prophesized! I thought that was freaking weird. Maybe the guy responsible for Brandon Lee's death actually got the idea from this film! Who knows!

Some people might find it in bad taste that this film actually uses real footage from Bruce Lee’s funeral. You see Game of Death suddenly becomes a documentary during its last five minutes. They actually show the way the world reacted to Lee's death, with thousands of people on the streets attending his funeral. They show Bruce Lee’s real dead body being careed around in a casket on his way to his burial. Bad taste? You bee the judge! Anyhows, this movie will more then likely be a let down for many of you guys and gals out there. It has almost no Bruce Lee in it, instead we get lousy looking double who looks NOTHING like Bruce Lee. The film also has some truly sloppy visual effects. I recommend you check this one out if you are a Lee enthusiast. But be warned, the REAL Bruce Lee only appears on the last 20 minutes or so. Its funny, because when Bruce Lee finally appears, all you'll be able to say is "that's what's been missing from this movie this whole  time!"

Rating: 2 out of 5