DRAGON SINCE 1973
- Year: 2003
- Directed by: Lot Sze
- Running time: 126 minutes
2003 marked the 30th anniversary of Bruce Lee's death, so what better way to cash in on it by releasing a Bruce Lee documentary! The movie feels very similar to Century Hero as it comprised entirely of interviews of people from Hong Kong, mostly people who knew Bruce back in his Hong Kong and Golden Harvest days. There are no clips of Bruce at all, the only shots of Bruce are the occaisional still photographs. There are some short generic video clips, and like a whopping six times we get to see the "host" of the program, Dominic Lam. Usually we're just stuck there watching whoever is talking at the moment, this can get somewhat difficult to watch, especially given the movie has a running time of 126 minutes!
That's not to say there isn't some interesting things said by some of the people, but it definitely could've used some editing. It could've been really good had the less interesting and downright useless information been cut. As I said above a lot of the people talking are people who worked with Bruce like fellow actors, editors, and assisant directors. They tells us what Bruce was like, what is was like working with him, etc. A few funny stories are told like when Bruce was in America he once urinated in public when the cops weren't around. I'm still trying to figure out how that's funny, but the old guy who told it seemed to think it was funny. Bruce also liked to eat raw food because he thought it was good for you. He also liked won ton noodles and his Korean BBQ on the raw side because he said it would cook in his stomach. Also, he was a genius (at driving).
In order to make this review longer I'm going to put in some filler in way of a list of people they talked to for the movie:
Shek Kin (Actor - Enter the Dragon),
Bee Chan (Actor/Director),
Jin Di (Actor - Way of the Dragon),
Pang Him (Producer),
Li Kun (Actor - The Big Boss, Fist of Fury),
Ko Chiu (Actor/Driving Instructor),
Alex To (Actor/Singer),
Andrew Lien (Actor/JKD Practitioner),
Shannon Ma (CG Designer),
Cheung Tung Cho (Director),
Chaplin C.P. Chang (Assitant Director - Enter the Dragon/Unit Manager - Way of the Dragon),
K.C. Cheng (Singer),
Tony To (Golden Harvest Promotion Manager),
Li Bing Bing (Actress),
Sam Lee (Actor),
Alex Cheung (Director/Camera Assistant - Way of the Dragon),
Cheung Yiu Chung (Editor - The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon, Enter the Dragon, Game of Death)
Above I stated Bruce Lee was genius (at driving). Bruce's dad paid Ko Chiu to give Bruce some driving lessons. He paid $5/hour and paid for 30 hours of lessons. Bruce was so good he took his driving test in Mongkok (and passed!) after only 7 hours of lessons. He was gifted, talented, exceptional, etc, etc (at driving). Now that I've told you that, there's no need to go out and watch this documentary.
"Reviewed" by Keith.
