Film: Bruce Lee: The Immortal Dragon
Release date: 3rd May 2010
Certificate: 12
Running time: 90 mins
Director: Jude Gerard Prest
Starring: Bruce Lee, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Linda Lee Cadwell
Genre: Documentary
Studio: Stax
Format: DVD
Country: USA
To mark the 70th Anniversary of Bruce Lee’s birth, Stax Entertainment has looked to cash-in by reissuing what is considered the definitive (and authorised) biography, with a host of additional extras.
So we pick things up in 1940, where Lee was born to a touring Chinese film actor and superstitious mother in the USA – here we discover he was given a female name (Sai Fon) by his mother to deceive evil spirits, and a second name Bruce by their American doctor. We are then whisked through an overview of childhood and adolescence at home in Hong Kong - learning how he worked in the film industry as a child actor, that he was tutored in the martial art of Wing Chun by Yip Man as a teenager, following a gang beating, and that he was sent to live with friends and family in the USA to prevent his continuation down a criminal path.
In the USA, his martial arts skills were so impressive to fellow classmates at the University of Washington where he had enrolled that it wasn’t long before he had opened his own martial arts school, was astonishing crowds at tournaments, and was screen testing for television work.
The crux of the documentary then concentrates on how he had to overcome racial prejudice and a series of disappointments to pursue first television work and ultimately his dream of being a major Hollywood player – from his time on the short-lived Green Hornet programme, to how his idea for the Kung Fu series was taken and then produced without him, training high profile celebrities, becoming a box office smash back home in Hong Kong, and so on – before his shock death on the cusp of superstardom...
Everything a fan of Bruce Lee could want is crammed into a fairly brief running time – early film footage (an excerpt from film Kid Cheung shows a “natural” 6-year-old Lee displaying characteristics we would see in later works), a whole host of photographs from throughout his life, footage of Bruce training and teaching, screen tests (two full-length screen tests for the Green Hornet are included in the extras), interviews with Lee (where he philosophises about being “shapeless like water”), key action scenes from his best known works (you never tire of seeing Lee disposing of foes with his nun chucks), and so on.
The life of Bruce Lee is arguably more dramatic and exciting than the plot of any of his films – from having to face-off against a top martial artist, having angered fellow Asians in the USA by teaching their secrets to westerners, to overcoming a potential disabling injury that doctors said would prevent him practicing again – and it’s a tale to capture the hearts and imaginations of many, having arrived to a foreign land with next to nothing, but managing to prevail and succeed when the odds were stacked so firmly against him.
The documentary plays it straight, in that there’s a quick fire relaying of factual information – and the pace never lets up, cutting from one event or achievement to another as we progress through his storyline with key friends, family members, industry contacts, etc, all sharing their anecdotes. Fans of the excellent Dragon film, who aren’t so familiar with Lee’s life story, may be surprised at how many liberties the filmmakers took with that biopic, and this documentary, and in particular Linda (his wife), who stresses the fact, does away with the myths and exaggerations which tend to follow high-profile celebrities who are taken away from us relatively early in life.
On that score, it perhaps doesn’t titillate or encapsulate as much as it should, and it is overly sycophantic – skirting over misdemeanours in his life (breaking a man’s arm in a street fight is pretty much laughed off early on), and not even entertaining negative rumours (such as the affair many believe he was having with the actress Betty Ting, whose apartment he was in when he suffered cerebral edema, and subsequently passed away) – with everyone keen to stress how “loyal” he was, how he was their “best friend”, a man of “integrity”, and such like.
Focussing on plaudits, the film misses scope to elaborate a little more on the darker and more determined side of Lee’s character – his brother mentions how he was motivated to becoming Hollywood’s highest paid actor, but this is never developed upon, even though it’s obvious no man would have put his body through such gruelling extremes and worked so hard in so many fields to make money and gain notoriety unless he had some inner demons and power issues. After all, by his third Asian blockbuster, Way Of The Dragon, he had assumed complete control of every facet of the film’s production - not only writing, choreographing, starring and directing, but providing the score!
Saying that, any plaudits are of course due, and his achievements in just 32 years of life, and his ultimate “unrivalled legacy,” cannot be overestimated. Changing how Asian people were perceived – becoming the first “asian hero” with Western audiences – Lee never got to enjoy the level of success he had craved (passing away prior to the release of Enter The Dragon, we will never know where his career may have taken him or the film industry), but he inspired and broke down the barriers for so many, and he did change how films were subsequently made (although it’s perhaps unfair to put the blame for Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal, as the narrator alludes to, squarely at his feet).
Even if the package overall doesn’t do Lee full justice (most of the extras are very texty and would have been better presented in an accompanying, illustrated booklet), and the second documentary ultimately rehashes the same information, with the same key protagonists, Immortal Dragon is a worthy tribute to a key figure in entertainment history. DH
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