The Legend of Bruce Lee Review

• 8th Jan 2012

OK, for no other reason than I just love the word ‘capsule’; here’s Ben’s quick capsule review of this DVD:

• It’s a Bruce Lee biopic seemingly in a similar vein (but doing without the fantasy elements), to 1993’s Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story
• It boasts a full and rather epic 3 hour run time
• It charts Lee’s life and career from his leaving Hong Kong in the late 50s, to his death in 1973
• It is has the endorsement of Shannon Lee (Bruce’s daughter) as Executive Producer
• It’s very long (I’m not sure I mentioned that)

By the time you read this, this DVD may well have already been released in the UK to the usual deafening silence a seemingly straight to DVD title generates. However, the origins of this movie are more complex than the rather non-existent promo info and vanilla plain DVD presentation would have you believe. A little digging around the webliverse reveals a much more interesting prospect.

The Legend of Bruce Lee is actually (or more accurately ‘originally’), a highly successful and record breaking CCTV (Chinese Central Television) made TV series that launched in 2008. The 50 episode series (representing maybe 37 hours of television), was phenomenally popular in China and Hong Kong, and then syndicated globally (including the USA). What we have here however, is an attempt at a distillation of the series down into a 3 hour movie.

As a massive and long standing Bruce Lee fan, I was more than a little excited at the idea of a new (hopefully more realistic) biopic of the man.

Starring Kung-Fu Hustle‘s Danny Chan in the lead role, with a host of notable martial arts and action personalities including Ray Park, Gary Daniels and Marc Dacascos filling in some of the key supporting characters; the movie does have an instantly international feel. This is good, but it is also, unfortunately, one of only a handful of good things I’ll have to say about it.

I’ll be frank right off the bat, the production value here is extremely low. To the point where, to begin with, I found it almost impossible to watch. Incidentally, my wife; after initially being quite into the idea of watching the movie, was completely turned off and checked out after about fifteen minutes.

The whole thing is shot on video by the looks, maybe mini-DV, and is very cheap looking. I mean ‘really’ cheap. Strange isn’t it, that when presented with a regular video image which is arguably closer to actual real life than say a 235 anamorphic scoped out image, we feel like we’re being short changed somehow, and the images on screen are somehow less dramatic, less convincing, and generally disappointing to behold. US and even UK television productions are often of a much higher quality these days, and the look of this movie is a good dose less pleasing than even the average daytime soap level of film quality.

Oh dear, what a shame.

For a modern TV show, this would be bad. For a movie, it’s pretty much unforgivable.

Over the course of the film’s epic run time (did I mention it was three hours long? I’m not sure I did), I must admit, I did get more used to the cheap video look. Eventually, I even forgot about it enough to, at least, get semi-absorbed into the narrative. The fact that I have a profound personal interest in the subject matter no doubt offers a lift in this respect.

Of course, this fragile suspension of disbelief is smashed every time a location shot includes items that are obviously more modern than the period setting should dictate (the most noticeable culprit for the casual observer being things like modern vehicles). Oh, and continuity? Forget it man.

I started off watching the movie in the dubbed English, but it was so awful that along with the aforementioned cheapness of the film’s look, I got barely an hour in before having to turn off and take a break. I haven’t seen English dubbing like this since the 80s. When I came back to it, I’d somehow switched to the subtitled Chinese audio track (it’s like my PS3 was attempting a ‘Hail Mary’ rescue). This actually seemed less clunky most of the time (even when watching the English speaking characters). I don’t think the DVD menu actually gives you switchable audio tracks. Rather, you have to quit, stop eject etc and re-present the disc to make an initial selection. Good luck with that if your machine is clever enough to recall a disc even when you’ve taken it out.

I’m actually not 100% sure how I did it….perhaps I dreamt it.

Right, so a word about the content and narrative.

For any informed fan of the ‘facts’ of Bruce Lee’s life; watching this movie makes it immediately obvious that even though the production has Shannon Lee’s name endorsing it as Exec Producer; It is very far cry from being a frank and factual account of his life and career. Rather, it carries all the usual hallmarks of the adapted dramatisation. Thankfully, it doesn’t go as far as Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story did (in particular, that movie’s waking dream, Demon Warrior curse scenes etc), which is a good thing. However, there are events depicted in the movie that just didn’t happen (like how he really got his famous back injury). I guess that is the way of things in movie land, but it is annoying that someone as genuinely fascinating as Bruce Lee is still not deemed quite fascinating enough by film makers not to pull these kinds of ‘dramatic’ shenanigans on us.

On the plus side; Danny Chan seems to inhabit the character of Bruce Lee better and better as the film goes on, but I’m not 100% sold on his interpretation at all times. Jason Scott Lee, while bearing less physical resemblance to Bruce, I think conveyed a certain essential essence (if you can have such a thing) in his 1993 portrayal. This essence is what made Dragon such a compelling watch for a Bruce fan, despite it’s many shortcomings and factual inaccuracies. Chan is unable (at least within the confines of the movie cut) to deliver as complete and rounded a Bruce Lee as one would hope. As a side note, he also does not exhibit the extreme, shredded physicality of Lee either, which again serves to distract the mind a little too. He looks a little soft when he shouldn’t.

The fact that Chan seems to get considerably better throughout is in no doubt due to the extreme editing exacted on the original 50 episode TV show format to create this film cut. It’s like when John Hughes made Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (“What?” says Ben’s built in head editor), yeah bear with me. When Hughes shot FBDO, he purposefully placed Matthew Broderick’s extended opening monologue at the end of the shooting schedule. This was because he wanted Broderick to have lived and breathed Ferris for weeks and weeks shooting the rest of the movie before doing that character establishing opening scene. Broderick was thus able to deliver a better performance than he would have done if he had had to do it on day 1, scene 1. I suspect that a lot of Chan’s best moments as Lee would have been some way in to the original series’ production run.

Of course, I could be completely wrong.

Naturally, a key part of the creation of this film specifically (perhaps the most important part), is the process of cutting a 37 hour story down to a 3 hour one, and still retain a complete and thorough feel, and a good mapping of key events. I’m not aware if any scenes were re-shot for this edit to make life easier, but it seems clear that either way, it was a next to impossible job to create the kind of flow you would ideally choose if the film was being storyboarded out from scratch. I won’t bother going in to too much detail but there’s definitely a certain confusion and unevenness to the proceedings. For instance, the entire second hour of the film is dedicated to nothing but Bruce’s physical recovery (from the aforementioned back injury), and the formulation of his Taio of Jeet Kune Do. Important things to be sure, but do we really need over two hours of movie time before he’s even relocated back to Hong Kong? If we do need that long to get here, then surely we can’t then breeze through his entire film career in what seems like about twenty min….oh wait, yes we can. Weird.

Hmmm, it’s obviously someone’s idea of what’s important to show, but it doesn’t feel balanced to me.

I should mention that it’s long too, like 3 hours or something…..and sometimes feels even longer than that.

So, it would seem that I’m not quite feeling this movie. It’s true, I found it a tough watch. So before I begin to wrap this one up, there is one thing I’m yet to mention that most Lee fans will want to know…

Fight scenes.

OK, so it’s probably no surprise to anyone to learn that the combat scenes in The Legend of Bruce Lee are very inconsistent throughout. No doubt the cheap ‘video’ look of the movie plays a part here but it must be said that some very high level martial artists (Ray Park for example), come across as decidedly average in ability (as does Chan quite often too). Some of it is in the editing for sure. If there’s one thing I hate in fight scenes, it’s getting the distinct impression that the editor is using fast, close cutting to make up for a lack of actual talent in his players. It’s such a cheap trick and is horrible to watch. Here, we often seem to have the polar opposite problem. Turgid, plodding camera coverage, the occasional dutch angle coupled with really unimaginative cutting and odd CG or animated inserts, showing up the often staggeringly lumpy fight choreography and direction of actually really very talented martial artists.

What a travesty.

This is particularly unforgivable in terms of conveying the fluid movement, speed, grace and power of an artist like Bruce Lee. “Be water, my friend” Bruce once said. Well, some of the fight choreography makes Chan’s Bruce look more like he’s trying to be porridge perhaps. I don’t mean to sound mean, or be wailing on this point too long, but there really is a massively staged and choreographed feel to the fight scenes that is only occasionally peppered with a genuinely impressive or dynamic looking cut. Thanks heavens there are at least a few though, although gentlemen; a word in your ear: Hong Kong style wire work is very out of place and not welcome in any fight scene supposedly involving Bruce Lee. To my knowledge, and of what I understand of Lee’s philosophy on self expression and physical honesty, he never used this type of fakery. You shouldn’t either. Nuff said.

So a final word. I got the feeling that because this production has Lee’s daughter Shannon attached as Executive Producer, we were unlikely to get a frank and honest story, or anything that wasn’t ‘best possible light’. I was right, and this most notably manifests in the way they deal with Bruce’s death. There is no mention of where he was, or what he was doing when he died. The fact is, he was at actress Betty Ting Pei’s apartment alone with her. I have absolutely no idea if Bruce and Betty were having an affair and I care not a jot in terms of how I feel about the man. Having said that, I like to think that he wasn’t and that his visit was all above board for the continuing sake of Linda Lee Cadwell and her family. However, the fact remains that he was indeed ‘there’ and for the movie to completely avoid acknowledging that; to my mind is unnecessary.

Anyway, the movie is out on the 12th January I believe and, all in all, if you can put up with the quality issue of the film stock there is something to be had from giving it a go. Although watch out, because it’s three hours long. I guess the best thing I can say about it, above and beyond everything good and bad already written here; is that watching the movie does make me want to seek out the original 50 part TV series and try that on for size. I have a feeling it works a lot better in that more relaxed and time generous medium.

We end with a quote from the master himself:

“The key to immortality is first having a life worth remembering”

Spot on Bruce, spot on.

Ben Pegley