Birth of the Dragon

That this movie is being released now just proves that people are still completely ignorant and easily fooled. And will buy anything with the name Bruce Lee attached.

"Based on a true story" except all the "facts" are completely made up. Let's make Wong a Shaolin monk. The fact he had nothing to do with the Shaolin temple and wasn't a monk doesn't really matter. Let's put him in some monk robes because, you know, that's cool....

Let's completely avoid the real reasons why the fight happened. Let's avoid what really happened in the fight.

Let's go back to the story about "teaching whites" that Linda Lee made up and has been debunked for YEARS. The already established teachers in California were already teaching non-Chinese. Wong himself taught non-Chinese.

Let's pretend a demonstration that wasn't well received was a real fight that impressed everyone immediately.

Honestly, not sure who should be more ashamed, the people who buy this schlock or the people who had the nerve to make it

It's just a movie, not a study of racism. One only has to look at the review dates and see a lot were done within a few days as if it was a class project by snowflakes who are insulted by the fact that whites breathe the same air as they do. Faux intellects claiming whites insult Asians / Japanese who have a sad history, like whites that included slavery and practices of racial superiority. What has that got to do with this movie? Really nuts to get phony intellect social study reviews by rabid hate mongers. Yes, Hollywood makes a lot of junk that I would not use to hold my garbage. But this film hardly merits the volumes of visceral hate lobbed against white people. The claim that Asians are not stars in Hollywood belittles the Asian community of stars that have made it big in Hollywood. Another meh popcorn movie for a rainy day that will not be added to my collection.

It's been 23 years since the last major Hollywood biopic on Bruce Lee. While we're a full generation forward, the 20-odd year interval wasn't sufficient to outlast the durable media biases that afflict how minorities, in this case, Asian-Americans, are depicted.

Birth of the Dragon will pull in fans off the street by claiming to tell the story of Bruce Lee, an iconic figure in American history. However, they may be surprised to find that the movie actually has very little to say about Lee. About his love life. About who he is as a human being. In fact, he is dealt with in such a stylized, mysterious manner -- and not as a full human being -- it's unclear the movie gives the viewer anything more than he already knew. Instead, Lee's primary purpose is to serve the white protagonist Steve McKnee in various ways.

First, the film gives short shrift to the actual epic fight between Lee and his rival. We do not even know how that fight impacted Lee's life afterwards, what he learned from it, or how it changed his fighting style. But we do know Lee went through all that trouble, and the animating force behind it was that Lee's rival was against Caucasians like McKnee being trained to fight. What's happening here is that - this really isn't about Lee. It's more about some character we've never heard of but somehow has the country's greatest martial arts fighter fighting on his behalf.

It doesn't end there. Lee, a role model for Americans, including Asian-Americans, is seen as flat. He is shown as without a romantic interest. In contrast, McKnee has an Asian Girlfriend...and lo and behold he needs Lee to fight for him again to get the girlfriend back after she's abducted by "bad Asians". And Lee does.

I think we came to watch Bruce Lee. Not Bruce Lee aid some random fictional nobody on his mission to belong, and then his mission to get back said nobody's girlfriend.

Like many famous people, the experiences of martial arts icon Bruce Lee before he became famous are not well-known, but are crucial to understanding the person he became. The man the world came to know as Bruce Lee was born Lee Jun-fat in San Francisco on November 27, 1940, in the Chinese "Year of the Dragon". His father was a Chinese opera star who was touring the U.S. at the time, but took his family back to their native Hong Kong shortly before Japan invaded. After World War II ended, Lee's father resumed his earlier film career and Bruce began appearing on screen as a child actor. As he continued making movies, Bruce also began learning Chinese martial arts, first from his father and then from the famous Wing Chun master teacher Yip Man. Bruce was getting into a lot of street fights, which he usually won, but when he was 18, amid rumored threats to his life, his parents sent him to live with his older sister in San Francisco. Just months later, Lee moved to Seattle where he finished high school, went to college and began teaching martial arts, eventually opening his own studio. When he was 23, he moved to Oakland, California to live with locally famous martial artist James Yimm Lee, with whom he opened his second studio. Bruce himself became well-known throughout the Bay Area and beyond. He sought ways to increase the momentum of his martial arts career and to translate that into a show business career. He also began to evolve as a martial artist. This is the period of Bruce Lee's life that is chronicled (and fictionalized) in the 2017 martial arts action movie "Birth of the Dragon" (PG-13, 1:43).

In 1964, Bruce Lee (Philip Ng) is a skilled and cocky master teacher running his own Bay Area martial arts studio. He also has some of his students appear in crude Kung Fu movies which Lee produces, directs, writes and stars in. Lee is a controversial figure, both in central California and even back in Asia for his teaching emphasis on "kicking ass" over spirituality, for turning Kung Fu into mass entertainment and (especially) for teaching Caucasians. One of those students is Steve McKee (Billy Magnussen, playing a fictionalized version of actor Steve McQueen, a real-life student of Lee's). Steve is a promising student, but increasingly has doubts about Lee's philosophy and whether Lee can help him reach his potential.

And then Lee learns that a famous Chinese martial artist Wong Jack Man (Yu Xia) is coming to San Francisco, but isn't sure why. He thinks it's because Wong wants to spy on him. Or maybe Wong wants to punish Lee for teaching Kung Fu to whites. Either way, Lee is unswayed and unafraid. Steve's attitude is different, however. He is intrigued by the new arrival and eventually gravitates to Wong and his more spiritual approach to life – and Kung Fu – and tries to persuade the master to take him on as a student. Meanwhile, Steve becomes an intermediary between Lee and Wong, delivering messages between the two rivals as they challenge each other and then negotiate the terms of one decisive, high-stakes fight.

This is where the veracity of the film's story gets even murkier. The set-up for this battle royale involves a fictional young Chinese woman named Xiulan (Jingjing Qu). She, as many others like her, was brought to the U.S. by a Chinese crime lord called Auntie Blossom (Jin Xing) who forces these girls into servitude – sometimes of the domestic variety – and sometimes in one of her "houses". Steve falls in love with Xiulan and wants to free her from her virtual slavery. Xiulan's fate becomes part of the motivation for the Lee-Wong match. Such a fight between the two men did actually take place, but it happened indoors, it was not filmed and there were relatively few witnesses. Consequently, reports of the fight – from how long it lasted to who won – have varied widely from the very beginning and remain a source of controversy to this day. The movie's portrayal of the fight is very entertaining and it does take sides in how it shows the fight playing out, but the actual fight sequence and its aftermath in the film's story can only be viewed from the perspective of significant creative license. However, one aspect of the fight's result does stand on its own merits. That being the significant impact the fight had on Lee's continuing rise to fame and on his style as a martial artist. No spoilers here, but you can read all about it online.

"Birth of the Dragon" is an entertaining piece of biopic fiction. But Movie Fans' reactions will depend on how they view the large amount of fictionalization in the story (including forcing that story into a recognizable Hollywood formula) – and what they think of how the climactic fight is portrayed. Based on Michael Dorgan's article, "Bruce Lee's Toughest Fight", screen writing partners (and Oscar nominees) Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson ("Nixon", "Ali", "Pawn Sacrifice") and director George Nolfi ("The Adjustment Bureau") give us an interesting version of actual events. Action movie and martial arts fans will likely be entertained, while dedicated Bruce Lee fans will probably be intrigued, if nothing else. (Although some will find the emphasis on Steve McKee's character unnecessarily distracting). Through the pleasing efforts of the filmmakers, the serviceable acting of the supporting cast and the fairly strong performances of Phillip Ng, Yu Xia and Billy Rasmussen, Movie Fans get an unspectacular, but enjoyable story which reveals at least some truths about the rise of one of the greatest and most influential martial artists of all time. "B+"

I was at first put off by the trailers of the film because the street alley scene and certain dialogue lines seemed cheesy without context, however in the progression of the full film they play their part just fine.

In the idea that the "birth of the dragon" was the transition from Bruce Lee's generic focus of Kung Fu and other martial arts into the consolidated uniform art of Jeet Kune Do, this movie highlighted the event that sparked that transition in an entertaining way. Combining some historical information with an enticing cinematic focus, intertwined with some fictional inclusions of characters and story for the sake of making it an entertainment film rather than direct informational documentary, I was satisfied overall with the viewing and find that it paid decent homage to the memory of Bruce Lee by showing a human element of imperfection during the beginning of his career.

Allowing us to see into the information of his time before becoming a cultural icon was refreshing, and influenced me to read into Lee's history during those years and before. Again, the film does include uses of fictional elements in order to help propel the story in a standard acceptable for entertaining viewership, and as such does not convey an entirely truthful set of events, only a summary with cinematic filler.

I recommend seeing this film to see what you think of it, and afterwards reading about the events around the conflict between Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man yourself, as there are some interesting details to be found.