Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story

Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story is directed by Rob Cohen who also co-adapts the screenplay with John Raffo and Edward Khmara. It stars Jason Scott Lee, Lauren Holly, Robert Wagner and Michael Learned. Music is by Randy Edelman and cinematography by David Eggby.

Based on Bruce Lee: The Man I Only Knew by Linda Lee Caldwell (Bruce Lee's widow), "Dragon" is more tribute movie than biography. A big success on release, it's a film that still causes some consternation with a number of Bruce Lee fans. The reasoning is because in true Hollywood style it tinkers with facts, misses out other notable points and has some time line issues. Yet if you can accept it as a "painted always in a positive light" homage piece more than a definitive biography? Then you find the essence of the man and his short life is there in glorious splendour.

In many ways it's an inspiring tale of a complex man, while it also plays out as a wonderful love story between two people of a different race making it work at a time when such a thing was frowned upon by the ignorant. Lee's skills as an artist and a human being are firmly portrayed, with Jason Scott Lee (no relation) proving to be admirable in his depiction of such. The fights are very well choreographed and perfectly OTT, but crucially they do not come at a cost to the story, it's the narrative that shines through even as the action appeases the action hungry hoards. While rightly there's iconography unbound, naturally.

The production value is high as regards quality of colour photography, set and costume design and recreations of famous moments. Edelman's score is a heart swelling and heroic scorcher that avoids over dosing on Oriental strains, Cohen moves it along at a nice clip and Holly is fabulous in her sympathetic portrayal of Bruce's wife. It's not all perfect, though. Away from the issues the hard core Lee fans have, the Demon that haunts the Lee family dreams is more funny than scary and the finale feels rushed and not dramatically fulfilling. It's fair that Lee's wife voices over the end and tells us it's about celebrating his life, but his death remains a key issue and skipping over it is a mistake.

In the year of the film's release, the Lee's first child, Brandon, would be killed whilst filming The Crow, aged 28. Thus as Linda Lee Caldwell helped craft a film about a husband who died aged just 32, she lost her son. There is added poignancy in that, it's something that undeniably makes Dragon even more of a moving experience, but rest assured, as a film tribute to Bruce Lee, it earns every one of its emotional and thoughtful beats. 8/10

This film as a stand alone kung fu movie would be worthy of your attention, as it is very enjoyable and well made. The thing that makes it special is Jason Scott Lee's portrayal of the legend that is Bruce Lee.

He successfully captures his mannerisms, attitude and even his fighting style, extremely convincingly (a truly remarkable feat of acting ability.)

Although dramatised to heighten your viewing pleasure, the story actually follows the events in Bruce Lee's life and shows us the man behind the martial arts, covering his inner turmoils and personal struggles as well as his famous physical ability.

A great movie, befitting the legend that is Bruce Lee.

8/10

This is a great movie. Nice action scenes, nice soundtrack, nice photo...But it's not a biography of the greatest fighter of all time: Bruce Lee. I am a big fan of Bruce and I know his life from A to Z, and this is not what I saw in that movie. I could tell all the mistakes I saw in the movie but here's just a few: In the movie: he is a unique child Reality: He had one brother and two sisters and he didn't live with his father only, he had his mother. He didn't leave Hong-Kong because of the cops (what the?...) he left because he wanted to be famous. And please! What is that story of the ghost from the depts of hell?!?!?

No, if you want to make a great action movie, good, go ahead, the right way to do it. But if you want to make a bio of a true legend, please tell the true story.

7/10

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.

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.