Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story

Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story_360P

source: Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story

The story told in the movie is really excellent and entertaining. However it feels more like a story based on the life of Bruce Lee rather then an actual biopic of his life. Jason Scott Lee perfectly plays Kung Fu legend Bruce Lee. Not only the way he plays Lee is impressive but also his fighting skills. The music by Randy Edelman was also surprising good. There are way too many fictitious and untrue things added in the movie to be considered a fair biography. But does it really matter for the movie? It's like "Ed Wood" that was also filled with altered things and false truths but still it was a movie that told us the story of an unique character and what drove him. "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story" isn't much different in that way. OK it's not completely fair to compare this movie to "Ed Wood" since that was a far superior movie to "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story" (what a horrible title by the way). The fight sequence are probably the best thing about the movie and they were highly entertaining, although very hard to believe that they actually really happened that way. It's a good entertaining movie but if you want to get to know more about Bruce Lee this isn't the best material for you to start with. 7/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Happening across the book THE TAO OF BRUCE LEE by Davis Miller brought back some fond memories: memories of seeing THE GREEN HORNET teleseries when it first aired, and being amazed by The Hornet's sidekick, Kato, as he took out villain after villain with what seemed to be almost supernatural abilities (but which clearly were NOT: the punches and kicks had a BELIEVABILITY about them, a verisimilitude lacking in most television and motion picture slugfests); memories of the hot summer days, not very many years later, spent slouched down in my seat watching this same Human Dynamo dispatch an assortment of villains up on The Big Screen, punctuating each kick and punch with an ear-splitting scream or his trademark howl. "Soon I was lost in the thunder," writes Miller. "I'd bathe in dreams and in lightning." Much has been made of Bruce Lee's alleged fighting ability; even Miller seems to climb atop the fence by the end of his book. (He recounts discussions with another martial artist, full contact heavyweight karate champion Joe Lewis, that would suggest another book might be a good idea: if anyone's been overlooked long enough, it's Joe Lewis- and of Lewis's ring skills there's little doubt: I saw him fight twice, and he was MOST impressive, even against much bigger opponents. I read somewhere that Bruce Lee himself once referred to Lewis as "the greatest fighter on the face of the Earth." How's THAT for an endorsement?) This movie, however, is about as true to life as any of the other exploitation movies that literally followed in his wake. Lee was all too human (as his death attests) and had his flaws (unlike the rest of us): in the book HONG KONG BABYLON, it's revealed that the woman in whose bed his body was found was the girlfriend of a Triad boss. But the fact remains that Bruce Lee was- and IS- an inspiration to millions- myself included. This movie does him a great disservice.

A complete embarrassment to Lee's legacy. Bad acting, bad music, contrived story, atrocious fight choreography....and a sickening display of political correctness. When I heard the line "You would put your tongue in a Chinese's mouth?" I had to end the misery there. This marked the first time I couldn't finish a movie in quite some time. And let's face it, Jason Scott Lee is no Bruce Lee. Rather than display the physical prowess of the legend, he does cheesy flips and sommersaults. Frankly I'm surprised this film got as high a rating as it did on this site. It definitely didn't deserve (at present) a 6.7. A huge let down, particularly for me, as a martial arts connoisseur. Avoid at all costs.

The turbulent, sometimes trying life of Bruce Lee, born Lee Jun-Fan in San Francisco and raised in Hong Kong, who was the leading proponent of Wing Chun Gung Fu and Wu style Tai Chi Chuan in the mid-'60s, as well as a boxing champ, a California martial-arts teacher, loving husband to a young American woman who soon gave him two children, and an international television and movie star in the early 1970s. Jason Scott Lee gives a commanding, one-of-a-kind performance as Bruce Lee, and the film is a well-produced chronicle of one of the most curious and intriguing icons of the last 50 years. Still, the picture seems to play a little fast and loose with the facts, and anyone hoping for a comprehensive look behind the legend is likely to be disappointed. Because this is a dramatized biography of possibly the most popular of martial-arts masters, there's certainly a whole lot of mortal combat (some of which is purely extraneous, pumped up to satisfy the target audience), and the approach is a bit more 'comic book' than serious students might like. The supporting characters and extras are over-directed in their enthusiasm, yet nothing seems to get in the way of Jason Scott Lee who, though perhaps more bulky in frame than the real Bruce Lee, does everything he can with this role and more. ** from ****

My brother used to go to this rundown movie theater in Springfield,Massachusetts called The Jefferson Street Theater.From what I heard,it was a pretty bad place to go to.My brother would go there to see these kung fu flicks which probably excited him a lot being that he was a kid.A lot of kids went to or snuck to a martial arts film that probably made there day a lot better.Unfortunately,back on July 20,1973,the master of martial arts mysteriously died.His name was Bruce Lee.Years after his death,he is remembered throughout millions of fans,which includes me and is remembered around the world for his knowledge of martial arts."Dragon:The Bruce Lee Story" seems to be an appropriate title for a movie about the legend who reinvented martial arts .There has been a few biographies on Bruce Lee back in the 1970s.But none of those films didn't even bother to pay close attention to his lifestyle."Bruce Lee:The Man and the Myth" paid attention to Bruce Lee's fighting style and for that time the actor who played him did a fairly good job,but treated the character like a school kid performing kung fu moves after watching a martial arts movie.In "Dragon:The Bruce Lee Story",the actor,Jason Scott Lee,just doesn't portray Bruce Lee.His is Bruce Lee.He seems to take the role very seriously and surrounds his presence with Bruce Lee's spirit.This happens to be one of the best films of 1993 and happens to be a film that shows respect to the martial arts legend.The martial arts cheorography are one of the best that I have seen and I was really pulled into the action.Historicaly,"Dragon:The Bruce Lee Story" falls on its knees.Anyone who has studied Bruce Lee knows that what happens in this film didn't actually happen the way it actually did.For example,the scene in which he left Hong Kong and traveled to America in 1961.Any super Bruce Lee fan will know that he left Hong Kong in 1958.Biographies don't always get it right and I don't expect them to.Filmmakers usually do a pretty good job telling someone's true lifestory.Sometimes,they don't.The filmmakers who made "Dragon:The Bruce Lee Story",even though were not historically accurate,were accurate enough to qualify this as one of the best biographies that I have seen based on the martial arts legend.Jason Scott Lee should have been nominated an Academy Award for this film.I would given this film five stars.But the filmmakers failure to get into his life historicaly lowered down to four stars.This film I think works for fans of Bruce Lee.

Very Good But Horribly Inaccurate Account Of His Life If you are watching this as someone who has no knowledge of Bruce Lee's life then this is a good fun action film but someone who knows the history and the story of his life may be dissapointed as this is not at all accurate. And knowing Bey Logan, he must cringe watching this. The film depicts Bruce's early childhood in Hong Kong, his teenage years in the US right way through to his eventual death in 1973. The element that I think drags this film down the most is the mythological side of it, if it had just been a realistic account of his life without the myths and demons, it would have faired much better. There are many innacurate scenes and occurences in this film which understandably makes the film more exciting for mainstream audiences but as a Bruce fan myself i wish they would have stuck to what actually happened. I wish there were more scenes where Bruce was on set of one of his films, like Way Of The Dragon or Fist Of Fury. There could have been more scenes with Bruce with Yip Man or Brandon. There could have been scenes of Bruce being challenged on the street in his infamous street fights, the episode of the green hornet they portrayed i don't think was an actual episode. And Bruce was not injured by the fighter at the martial arts challenge in Chinatown it was when he was weightlifting and pulled his back out. But the fight scenes are well choreographed. Jason Scott Lee has got his portrayal of the man spot on, he brings the right amount emotion and power to the role, he's clearly done his research on Bruce's mannerism's and got himself in shape for the role as well as training for the fight scenes. Its hard to imagine anyone else who could have played the role, maybe Jet Li who at the time the film was made was 30 and roughly the right age to play Bruce, but Jet spoke very little English. Lauren Holly is equally as good in her role as Linda. The strong portrayals are in many ways successful because of the on set help of the real Linda and Shannon(who makes a cameo as a singer). The music is perhaps the film's strongest part, somehow the main score seems to catch the right emotion of Bruce's death and Brandon's death in 1993. I like the way the film captures the aura of Bruce Lee. There will indeed never be another Bruce Lee. I find it fascinating to imagine what Bruce would have done if he had lived, the 80's and 90's would have been very different if Arnie, Stallone, Wiilis, Seagal and Van Damme had Bruce to compete with, Bruce is sometimes critcised for being a bad actor, but i disagree, if anyone has seen his episodes of `Longstreet' or `Marlowe' they will see that Bruce could convincingly carry a dramatic scene given the right script and no dubbing and he oozed charisma, and he showed glimpses of good acting in Enter The Dragon. Being a Bruce fan i kind of wish that Jet Li would do the films that bruce did or was planning on doing, Jet's early work in Honk Kong like the Shaolin Temple or more recent stuff like Fist Of Legend(remake of Fist Of Fury) and Once Upon A Time In China was very promising and it seemed he was the successor to Bruce but instead now he's doing crap in Hollywood with DMX and Jason Statham. Strangely the mediocre Lethal Weapon 4 is Jet's best Hollywood film, Maybe Jet should do a project with John Woo, it would be interesting and they'd probably get the best out of each other.

Once you became a Bruce Lee addict and begin seeing and reading the numerous different biographies and biopics, you're going to realise that DRAGON has quite a bit of fiction in it - and in the bits you don't really expect it to. For example, Lee approached Raymond Chow's Golden Harvest production company to make a marital arts movie, not the other way round and Chow isn't even the guy! Also, due to Lee's 'mysterious' death, the film also doesn't really an idea of how its going to wrap it all up. Therefore, the film is the perfect example of the word 'vivid'. However, what makes Dragon the fine film that it is is that it decides to look at the two lesser-known aspects which dominated Lee's life - his long, ongoing 'battles' with an inner-demon and of course the racism of sixties America. These are managed and brought to the screen extremely well although to be fair they aren't particularly well developed. The highlights would have to be the performances of Jason Scott Lee as Bruce and Lauren Holly as his devoted wife, Linda. They share a remarkable chemistry together and are certainly a credit to their subjects. This review probably hasn't made Dragon sound like a very good movie. Well if that's the case, then please think the opposite.

When the DVD started with the off-screen voice of Bruce Lee's widow, Linda Lee Catwell, explaining just how she wants her husband to be remembered, I became afraid that she might have exerted some control over the production of "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story". When the opening credits finally started and I saw that the script was based on her own biography of Lee and actually co-written by her, I should have been wiser and spent the evening with something else. But some people never learn. At least, I am now able to warn everybody. Don't ever watch this thing. And here is why. If you hold political elections, you don't want anyone to manipulate the count. If you want to make a scientific discovery, you try to safeguard against your own prejudices. And if you want to write a biography of a legendary movie and martial arts star, YOU DON'T WANT HIS WIFE TO EXERT CENSORSHIP. Have I made myself clear? This movie is, in all honesty, the worst attempt at biography that I have ever seen. Its portrayal of Lee is so soft-focused, so white-washed, so sticky-sweet that it had me cringing in my seat. As judged from this movie, Bruce Lee was the cutest, most amiable, friendly, sensitive... (insert any positive adjective you like) person that ever walked the earth. There is not the slightest hint that this man might have had some inner troubles, some dark sides, some nasty habits, some human faults. Well, he MIGHT have been a nice person, I don't mind that. Very well. But he was probably no saint. (Besides, most saints aren't nice persons, anyway). I'm no expert for the life of Bruce Lee, but from the documentary material I have seen over the years, I perceived Lee as a slightly arrogant and even unintentionally comic person, e.g., when winding off his fortune-cookie philosophy in TV interviews. A person that was in the focus of public interest to such an extent MUST have been troubled by that. What about the constant strain of being a celebrity? What about the serious illness and overwork that led to his untimely death? Except for a ridiculously allegoric series of nightmare sequences whose visual style is shamelessly lifted from the then-recent "Chinese Ghost Story", the movie obviously avoids so many questions that it evokes totally unnecessary suspicions. Why have the scriptwriters made the bizarre decision to relegate the most interesting part of his life (his filmwork, most people would think) to the last twenty minutes of the movie? His tragic death, with all the questions it raises, is even spared completely. So, it's badly written. What about the rest? As to the actors, Jason Scott Lee is completely miscast. He does not bear the slightest resemblance to Bruce Lee -- he is baby-faced, utterly incapable of the violent menace Lee could convey in his movies. Needless to say, his attempts at imitating the master's martial arts are also quite lame. Much, much worse is Lauren Holly, who plays Lee's wife. The wife is portrayed as such a cute, wide-eyed little spouse that it gets downright sickening, considered that she is playing the co-scriptwriter. Scriptwriters should never be allowed to write their own biography. Technically, the movie is pedestrian and completely uninspired. At some points, I tried to predict the next movement direction of the camera and was never wrong. To conclude, this is brain-washed Hollywood grease of the lowest type, rose-tinted, unhistorical, dishonest, and boring to the extreme. Avoid it at any cost. Rent a Bruce Lee movie instead! Still 2/10, because at least nobody looked directly into the camera.