Spoilers, clichés and big dumb white guys abound.
Bruce Lee was an artisan, an innovator, an indomitable warrior, a genius. Inspiring many to create tributes to him, it unfortunately does not follow that those inspired to create these tributes are creative enough or qualified enough to do those tributes justice. Such is the case with Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.
Not really a story about Bruce Lee, more the story of an invented character from the Cliché Handbook of Action Film Heroes (Body-Oil Edition). And not so much a "tribute" as a "gratuitous insult"; excepting Jason Scott Lee's physical prowess and the overwhelming hotness of Lauren Holly, the film boasted absolutely no redeeming qualities. And lots of body-oil.
The dramatic contrivance of the "po-boy-immigrates-and-makes-good" was bad enough, even if it were true (which it is not) but then, in a film where "assault and battery" assumes a form of high art in the hands of the film's protagonist, we viewers are summarily assaulted and battered by the artlessness of the film-makers who opted for cliché over substance at every turn.
In Lee's first fight at the prom, he conveniently loses his shirt (a la Vintage Kirk) beneath the shirt, judiciously body-oiled like a seal at a massage parlor, big dumb white sailors not so much being beaten up by him as sliding off his pecs like penguins and hitting their heads on the floor.
The gym scene, and more big dumb white guys (and a token black guy) assault Lee for no reason remember that these were simple bygone days, when big dumb white guys were unaware that Every Asian Person Knows Kung Fu.
Clichés for breakfast, lunch and dinner: We've got the mother who doesn't approve, the searing hot white chick love interest, the battered loft converted into the martial arts school, the racism, the idiot antagonists attacking the hero with meat cleavers (which they never think to THROW at him), the kung fu veterans ordering Bruce to stop teaching or else - ! We've got the obligatory husband & wife confrontation (once again the wife bitching as her husband achieves a fame that she can only ride the coat-tails of: "I don't know who you ARE anymore!" how about "the guy who keeps you wealthy and your social status high"?). Even if many of these aspects were marginally accurate (such as his wife truly being the ideal 70s stunner), the storyline unfolded in such a PG-13 paint-by-numbers format that one couldn't help but question the veracity of its dramatic elements.
Then there's the goofy Black Knight character that haunts Bruce's dreams, proving beyond a doubt that the film-makers were higher than the publicist who engineered Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction". Besides the fact that this was an insulting dramatic metaphor for the mystery surrounding Lee's untimely demise, how dare the film-makers presume that this metaphysical nonsense in any way rationalizes, palliates or absolves the misfortune of Bruce's passing?
Enter the Bad Guy combatant we can tell he's the Bad Guy on accounta his scowl and ominous theme music, and his body-oil is a whole inch thicker - and Bruce's debilitating cliché-defeat at his hands, achieved by CHEATING on the Bad Guy's part, of course. It's all true. Hollywood tells us so.
Then we are treated to the obligatory montage of the Hero regaining his prowess through his Iron Will and jump-cut editing all due to his HOT WIFE'S pep talk - yes, if it weren't for bony, bossy Linda Lee, we'd never have Jeet Kune Do or Enter The Dragon.
Bruce's book, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do, was published posthumously but in this film, he miraculously receives a copy while recovering from his bogus back injury a miracle only Hollywood could achieve. We cannot even disregard the fallacies of this movie and focus on the broad strokes to glean Bruce's life story, for those broad strokes themselves are indiscernibly shrouded in misinformation.
Much like Capricorn One, another film which insulted the viewer from frame one to conclusion, with misinformation and egregious stupidity sprinkled so liberally throughout its makeup that one could not find any one point to logically start unraveling the threads of idiocy, Dragon bludgeons viewers with the unsubtle thematic gist that we are all obviously congenital idiots for watching it in the first place.
One such example of just how IGNINT the film-makers believe us to be is the scene in which we are made privy to the methods on how to film a movie, with the fight scene on the "last day of filming on The Big Boss". With just ONE tripod-mounted camera, they captured no less than 43 camera angles, and also captured slow motion shots without once loading different-speed film! Then, apparently you have to open the clapper and rip the film out and throw it on the ground in order to develop it, which is what Bruce does. Very informative! And all true, of course. Hollywood tells us so.
It seems ironic that these film-makers, who attempted to portray a pioneer who fought to elevate the martial arts film above that of B-Movie schlock, unwittingly created B-Movie schlock in the process. Though their intentions may have started out sincere (which I doubt), what is left on the screen is a rancid marketing vehicle cashing in on Bruce's fame, rather than what might have been a much more interesting, entertaining - AND THEREFORE even more commercially-successful - exploration of Lee's life and times, adversities and triumphs.
We can only hope that one day there will be a more reverent, less body-oiled, more factual movie to celebrate the life and achievements of The Little Dragon.
(Movie Maniacs, visit: www.poffysmoviemania.com)
Bruce Lee was an artisan, an innovator, an indomitable warrior, a genius. Inspiring many to create tributes to him, it unfortunately does not follow that those inspired to create these tributes are creative enough or qualified enough to do those tributes justice. Such is the case with Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.
Not really a story about Bruce Lee, more the story of an invented character from the Cliché Handbook of Action Film Heroes (Body-Oil Edition). And not so much a "tribute" as a "gratuitous insult"; excepting Jason Scott Lee's physical prowess and the overwhelming hotness of Lauren Holly, the film boasted absolutely no redeeming qualities. And lots of body-oil.
The dramatic contrivance of the "po-boy-immigrates-and-makes-good" was bad enough, even if it were true (which it is not) but then, in a film where "assault and battery" assumes a form of high art in the hands of the film's protagonist, we viewers are summarily assaulted and battered by the artlessness of the film-makers who opted for cliché over substance at every turn.
In Lee's first fight at the prom, he conveniently loses his shirt (a la Vintage Kirk) beneath the shirt, judiciously body-oiled like a seal at a massage parlor, big dumb white sailors not so much being beaten up by him as sliding off his pecs like penguins and hitting their heads on the floor.
The gym scene, and more big dumb white guys (and a token black guy) assault Lee for no reason remember that these were simple bygone days, when big dumb white guys were unaware that Every Asian Person Knows Kung Fu.
Clichés for breakfast, lunch and dinner: We've got the mother who doesn't approve, the searing hot white chick love interest, the battered loft converted into the martial arts school, the racism, the idiot antagonists attacking the hero with meat cleavers (which they never think to THROW at him), the kung fu veterans ordering Bruce to stop teaching or else - ! We've got the obligatory husband & wife confrontation (once again the wife bitching as her husband achieves a fame that she can only ride the coat-tails of: "I don't know who you ARE anymore!" how about "the guy who keeps you wealthy and your social status high"?). Even if many of these aspects were marginally accurate (such as his wife truly being the ideal 70s stunner), the storyline unfolded in such a PG-13 paint-by-numbers format that one couldn't help but question the veracity of its dramatic elements.
Then there's the goofy Black Knight character that haunts Bruce's dreams, proving beyond a doubt that the film-makers were higher than the publicist who engineered Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction". Besides the fact that this was an insulting dramatic metaphor for the mystery surrounding Lee's untimely demise, how dare the film-makers presume that this metaphysical nonsense in any way rationalizes, palliates or absolves the misfortune of Bruce's passing?
Enter the Bad Guy combatant we can tell he's the Bad Guy on accounta his scowl and ominous theme music, and his body-oil is a whole inch thicker - and Bruce's debilitating cliché-defeat at his hands, achieved by CHEATING on the Bad Guy's part, of course. It's all true. Hollywood tells us so.
Then we are treated to the obligatory montage of the Hero regaining his prowess through his Iron Will and jump-cut editing all due to his HOT WIFE'S pep talk - yes, if it weren't for bony, bossy Linda Lee, we'd never have Jeet Kune Do or Enter The Dragon.
Bruce's book, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do, was published posthumously but in this film, he miraculously receives a copy while recovering from his bogus back injury a miracle only Hollywood could achieve. We cannot even disregard the fallacies of this movie and focus on the broad strokes to glean Bruce's life story, for those broad strokes themselves are indiscernibly shrouded in misinformation.
Much like Capricorn One, another film which insulted the viewer from frame one to conclusion, with misinformation and egregious stupidity sprinkled so liberally throughout its makeup that one could not find any one point to logically start unraveling the threads of idiocy, Dragon bludgeons viewers with the unsubtle thematic gist that we are all obviously congenital idiots for watching it in the first place.
One such example of just how IGNINT the film-makers believe us to be is the scene in which we are made privy to the methods on how to film a movie, with the fight scene on the "last day of filming on The Big Boss". With just ONE tripod-mounted camera, they captured no less than 43 camera angles, and also captured slow motion shots without once loading different-speed film! Then, apparently you have to open the clapper and rip the film out and throw it on the ground in order to develop it, which is what Bruce does. Very informative! And all true, of course. Hollywood tells us so.
It seems ironic that these film-makers, who attempted to portray a pioneer who fought to elevate the martial arts film above that of B-Movie schlock, unwittingly created B-Movie schlock in the process. Though their intentions may have started out sincere (which I doubt), what is left on the screen is a rancid marketing vehicle cashing in on Bruce's fame, rather than what might have been a much more interesting, entertaining - AND THEREFORE even more commercially-successful - exploration of Lee's life and times, adversities and triumphs.
We can only hope that one day there will be a more reverent, less body-oiled, more factual movie to celebrate the life and achievements of The Little Dragon.
(Movie Maniacs, visit: www.poffysmoviemania.com)