Bruce Lee - Gigant des Kung Fu

This was Bruce Li's first outing as the martial arts legend Bruce Lee. While it does follow Lee from Hong Kong to America and back again you see that each segment of his life is highly exaggerated with no effort to try to tie in to his real life.

His alleged affair with Betty Ting Pei is also featured briefly.

While the chronology of his life seems followed, it feels as though the producers weren't trying to tell Bruce Lee's story. This film in my opinion was really made to cash in on the late star. Other biopics on Bruce Lee, while artistic license is taken (always), at least they tried to keep it in the spirit of who he was.

Caryn White is lovely as Linda Lee, but her character is merely a FAR background role with very few lines.

Was this a serious film? It tries to be. Were they trying to tell the story of Bruce Lee? It doesn't seem like it as the fights were exaggerated and the events in his life are not really represented well.

If you want a good Bruce Lee biopic from the "Bruceploitation" era, see Bruce Li's follow on in the title role in "Bruce Lee: the Man, the Myth." Artistic license again is taken there as well, but at least that time around, they are trying to tell Mr. Lee's story. "He's a Legend, He's a Hero" is not recommended for the Bruce Lee historian buff.

It starts on a ferry boat at night. A shooting star is ominous regarding the child's birth. The first fight is Ho Tsung-Tao against about five street fighters. They teach him a lesson and leave. At home, his father admonishes him for fighting then sends him to Yip Man to learn to fight better.

My copy is the Ocean Shores © 1986 version in VHS format and English dubbed by the A team of voice over guys.

The title page has "The Legend of Bruce Lee", yet another of the many names for this movie. Credits for the action director go to "Bruce Li". This is another alias for the actor Ho Tsung-Tao. He was born in Lebanon and briefly worked there as a stuntman. His first Hong Kong movie lead was 1974 "Super Dragon". (See my review of that movie here.) This was released in the USA as "The Dragon Dies Hard" and on Ocean Shores VHS "Bruce Lee - A Dragon Story". Hong Kong movie producers used him as a Bruce Lee look-alike. They even made his credits "Bruce Lee" and used the real Bruce Lee's picture on his movie posters. Consequently he had a brief movie career as little more than a marketing gimmick that ended in the early 1980s. This reviewer rates him as not the worst of the imitators yet certainly the most blatant. I have no information on his current life.

Any fan familiar with the Bruce Lee exploitation genre knows what to expect here and that is what is delivered. Bruce Lee's life is highly fictionalized. The fights are designed to look like Bruce Lee fighting. The basic plot is the fighter who promised not to fight pushed past his limit.

One of the white guy extras was Robert Kerver. I read he died of throat cancer in 1977 but have no further information. He has no credits for this movie here on IMDB but is listed on HKMDB. I also find his credit on 1981 "Zen Kwan Do Strikes Paris" though the dates don't make sense.