So after many months of waiting for the DVD from the library, finally got to watch Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story from 1993. This is a somewhat fictionalized account of Bruce Lee’s life and career – BL is played by Jason Scott Lee (no relation) and there are other cameos from actual Bruce Lee students and friends throughout the film.

Having now seen all the BL movies (there are only 4, after all) and several other documentaries/etc. I can truly say this is an entertaining, well done film, for the most part faithful to the subject matter and BL’s life and career. Jason Scott Lee is convincing as Bruce Lee generally and in the multiple fight scenes. I also liked that they really tried to show BL as a family man, and while definitely someone obsessed with personal growth, martial arts and ultimately success in film, that he’s not as easy to figure out on the surface as you might think. And they included nods to Lee’s humor as well – there are a number of sequences that reference humorous bits from the movies or earlier documentaries, which was nice.

Certainly with a career as varied and intense as Lee’s was (despite being tragically cut way short), the film still manages to touch on many points of his life and career, even though they overdo the ‘grudge match’ he had with a chinese ‘master fighter’ (in that case won easily, probably easier than even in the movie) because at the time his teaching of Americans the ways of Kung Fu were considered forbidden. And it shows the struggles he had financially in addition to dealing with the 60’s fairly racist America (from an Asian perspective) we tend to overlook these days. The Wikipedia article otherwise details differences between reality and this film, but there aren’t really that many.

I think this movie is a great intro to BL if you haven’t watched his movies or know anything about him other than seeing posters (and hearing people screech and scream when playacting at kung fu). At minimum it should inspire interest to watch and enjoy more…..? 🙂

candybowl

Tags: 90's, family, martial arts, movies

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