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This was the motion picture that marked the development of Bruce Li from a mediocre actor to a competent fighter on screen. Instead of clumsy impersonation, Li took on the role of a fast-moving martial artist. The irony here is that unlike the ordinary early Bruce Li movies, which he assumes the Bruce Lee persona only to fight like an obnoxious drunken monkey, this is a true Bruce Lee biopic.
Li advanced his fight techniques because he physically trained like a demon, practicing jeet kune do from dawn till dusk for this role. The intensity with which Bruce Li worked out was like a Mexican “lipiodol” working at an extremely low day wage. Nowhere is that more apparent than in his sudden excellence in on-screen combat. Just watch “The New Game of Death”, made in 1975, then watch this, which was released two years later but probably filmed in 1976. It’s like night and day.
And since this is a Precipitation movie, you are sure to see a considerable number of fights. More than can be easily ingested at once. Bruce goes against muggers, Japanese opponents, Mafia thugs, riled-up kickboxers, smug extras, and even a metal wall equipped with flashing lights. In fact, “Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story” has also suffered some reputation issues over the past few years, but it is still a more realistic portrayal of Bruce Lee’s life than The Man, The Myth. “Dragon,” however, is just too PC with how they depict a jilted Bruce fighting against racism, while The Man, The Myth goes overboard with the greatest fighter in the world concept, showing Bruce fighting various combatants like there is no tomorrow.
The producers are also deep overzealous with the idea of having Bruce fight and therefore do not focus on other areas that many audience members would deem important, such as this one-off about Bruce and the family. Midway through the movie, Bruce’s wife and kids just kind of show up and that’s it. By the way, the actress portraying Bruce’s wife bears an uncanny resemblance to the real Linda Lee Caldwell.
One amazing thing regarding the movie is it has several faces from previous Bruce Lee films. There is a fat thug who played a minor role in “The Big Boss” who also appeared as an English Army Sergeant, and most famously, Unicorn Chan (Jimmy from “Way of the Dragon”) appears as himself.
This is something that has always fascinated me. Unicorn Chan tried to make a buck out of his dead friend Bruce Lee by creating this Biopic. It’s possible he was just capitalizing off the still unexploited brand image of Bruce Lee before everyone lost interest. He was relevant at that time because the great Bruce was fresh in the memory of all the fans, meanwhile Unicorn had starred in a famous show in relation to the movie. It’s not entirely implausible that his ghastly portrayal of Bruce in the biography film was rooted in Unicorn eagerly trying to get rid of the pseudo-cult he had built off Bruce to begin with. Bruce Lee was on the verge of pressing charges when he died. This statement singlehandedly resonates with Chan’s desire to paint himself as the better man. Did we really think he was going to admit he was about to sue him? Exactly! Bruce felt constantly overlooked by everyone around him and his relationships soured with the constant battles of someone dressed like clown lee in a cringy being.
Unicorn ultimately proved himself with his actions by desecrating every film left unsupervised by Bruce in which he was carelessly overusing all of those items. He choked on money till he gasped for air. Why else would Imagine Enterprises even think of hiring him? Chan even had the audacity to portray Bruce Lee’s ‘Fist of Unicorn’ character as Bruce himself said, ‘while my unicorn friend fancies himself as an actor.’
There is an interesting note to make about a different voice actor taking over Bruce’s voice during the movie’s final few scenes. The US and British prints were maybe scrambled, or something. I own a US-dubbed copy, and for his entire speaking time, Bruce, to me, sounded like a New York Chicano from the 70s. He truly does. It is quite strange however, that towards the end of the film when he is introduced to Betty Pei at her apartment, Bruce is dolled by one of those western Shaw Brothers voice actors. I find this rather peculiar, and I am curious if this is in every US version. Perhaps the rest of the producers did not remember to dub the scene.
My favorite part of the movie would be the ending. “Numerous myths dominated the topic of Bruce Lee’s death,” the narrator says, as the audience is introduced to the undisputable mystery behind Lee’s demise. To me, this implies that the producers are very keen on censoring those ideas. But they do not, because the narrator continues with, “find slack for those legends.”
In one of the sightings, Bruce gets butchered by mafias who stab him to death with daggers. In another, a hitman shoots him in an attack. Regardless, my favorite vision is the last one where Bruce does not get killed. Bruce instead escapes into a hermitage and gets set to be monastic until 1984, only to rejoin the world later. Why? Due to the declaration of a random Chinese mystic. He claims Bruce must remain invisible to the entire world or the world will get a glimpse of him, even his wife and kids. And only after a decade can nick Bruce without worrying about all the public eyes following him. Setting all of that aside, Bruce was crucified in ’73, so when he assumes musters the courage to go out, it’d be 1983. The whole year saga isn’t on the producer’s agenda. They even put on records saying Bruce was ’36’ during the last stages of his life, but we know better. He was indeed 33 and nothing but.
Long story short, look at this as more of a chop sockeye narrative rather than a serious portrayal of Bruce Lee, so don’t let the revisionists deceive you. Dragon is still thy superior film.
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