Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993)

Supposedly based on a book by Lee's widow, this seems to me rather inaccurate and largely irrelevant. I hesitate to say artistic licence prevailed, because there is little art in this movie.

I'm no expert but I have seen a number of martial arts films and researched the real-life characters, such as Yip Man with whom Lee learnt Wing Chun - a fascinating period of his life that is largely overlooked here.

Jason Scott Lee is a decent enough actor who clearly works-out, but he demonstrates no mastery in this film. His movements seem clumsy and contrived. Bruce Lee was graceful, and JS is not.

Two out of ten for at least making the film, because Bruce Lee is one of a handful of iconic 20th century figures that everybody should learn about. But it does him no justice and frankly is offensive to knowledgeable viewers.

Fmovies: Bruce Lee was an amazing athlete and martial artist, with a story to match. It's just too bad Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story decided that wasn't worth telling. Instead, there are lots of fight scenes in improbable places with trumped-up foes, not to mention some stupid "curse of the dragon" that the real Bruce would never have believed in. In spots, this movie is almost as campy as the old Batman series was.

A few documentaries have taken honest looks at the Lee phenomenon and managed to remain interesting throughout by showing us a determined, disciplined man who made his own success. In this movie, they had the entirety of Lee's life to use and decided to make up whole sections out of thin air just to spice things up. It puts itself not much above the sensationalistic Hong Kong films that made Bruce look nearly superhuman and the victim of some vast Triad conspiracy when the real man was just as fascinating. What a waste. I know conflict is emphasized in most screen writing classes, but instead of fight after fight as shown in this movie, how about showing some of the famous friends and students Bruce taught? And avoid the idiotic scenes like Bruce supposedly shattering 300+ pound ice blocks into chips with a single punch. If I wanted to see impossible feats like that, I'd go watch a Superman movie.

Bruce's fighting philosophy was to eschew flashy techniques in favor of effective ones. Fighting wasn't for show, but to win. Only on film would he do things like backflips, somersaults, superhigh jumping kicks and animalistic kiai. Show us the man who trained long and hard, and studied and thought about not just fighting, but philosophy and health. Bruce's success was as much a product of his mind as of his body.

We're now nearing 20 years after this movie's release and the 40th anniversary of Lee's death, with his legend and popularity only slightly diminished. To this day, Bruce remains the paragon of martial arts in the eyes of many, the man to whom all others are compared. I have a dream that someone will do a true biopic. His true story deserves better than to be ignored and hidden. I'd like to see a real drama rather than melodrama, with characters that have depth rather than the cartoonish ones in this film. There have been too many lies and myths told about Bruce over the years and this movie shamefully introduced more. "All these years later, people still wonder about the way he died. I prefer to remember the way he lived." Too bad this movie didn't show that way.

I really liked Jason Scott Lee's portrayal of Bruce Lee, but I noticed many inaccuracies in the story. If I had not seen the AMC special on Lee last year, I would not have a problem.

-according to Linda Lee, Bruce was not hurt when competing for the right to teach whoever he wanted to. He hurt himself when he didn't stretch properly for a workout in 1970. That was the big inaccuracy

-Bruce auditioned for another role in early 1965 before the role of Kato was offered to him.

• other roles he took in America were completely ignored: "Marlowe", his appearances on "Longstreet", etc...the movie went right from 1967 to 1972 within a minute

If you want to see a really good special on Lee, as well as see lost footage from a project that was butchered after he died, check out the AMC documentary.

-

Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story fmovies. 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.

The story told in the movie is really excellent and entertaining. However it feels more like a story based on the life of Bruce Lee rather then an actual biopic of his life.

Jason Scott Lee perfectly plays Kung Fu legend Bruce Lee. Not only the way he plays Lee is impressive but also his fighting skills.

The music by Randy Edelman was also surprising good.

There are way too many fictitious and untrue things added in the movie to be considered a fair biography. But does it really matter for the movie? It's like "Ed Wood" that was also filled with altered things and false truths but still it was a movie that told us the story of an unique character and what drove him. "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story" isn't much different in that way. OK it's not completely fair to compare this movie to "Ed Wood" since that was a far superior movie to "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story" (what a horrible title by the way).

The fight sequence are probably the best thing about the movie and they were highly entertaining, although very hard to believe that they actually really happened that way.

It's a good entertaining movie but if you want to get to know more about Bruce Lee this isn't the best material for you to start with.

7/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

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