Also caught Birth of the Dragon, a new Bruce Lee story that tells the allegedly true story of his fight with Chinese shao-lin master Wang Jack Man in the early 60s, years before Lee would break out as a kung fu superstar in Enter the Dragon. Too bad the movie is not really about Bruce Lee or even Wang Jack Man or their fight. It’s really about Steve.
You know…. Steve.
Steve is very important to this movie.
Steve appears to be the movie’s “audience surrogate” – a white dude injected into the story to help tell the audience about the legendary Bruce Lee, a dude people who go see Birth of the Dragon probably already have a passing awareness of.
But, hey, it’s Steve!!
Steve plays a student of Bruce Lee’s kung-fu class in the early 60s. Lee is teaching Westerners about the ancient Chinese fighting discipline which, allegedly, the martial arts masters in China do not approve of. When Shao-Lin master Wang Jack Man comes to America, Steve meets him at the San Francisco docks and gives him a ride to Chinatown. Steve becomes his friend but is upset that Man will not train him. Steve is sure kung-fu is about kicking ass because Bruce Lee told him it was… but Man assures him martial arts are about the soul, the chi, the life energy.
Steve is not immediately convinced.
Meanwhile, Steve falls for a Chinese immigrant girl who is an indentured servant to the Chinese mafia in Chinatown. He wants to rescue her from that life and if he can convince Lee and Man to fight, the Chinese mafia agrees to letting her go (because they would control the gambling on the fight).
Steve must now convince these two legendary masters to fight!
Can Steve do it?
Will Steve rescue the Chinese girl from the evil gangsters?
This film stars with an opening text crawl telling us this fight between Lee and Man did happen and it is said that it was due to Lee teaching Westerners about kung-fu. The actual film assures us that Man comes to the US as penance for betraying his honor during an exhibition match in China and he had no interest in Lee.
Also, Bruce Lee is a massive asshole in this flick… he’s cocky, arrogant, and insufferable and treats kung-fu as an excuse to teach people to kick ass (his words). I gather this is partly his real-world public persona (cocky) but, when you match him up with the traditional martial arts mentality of Wang Jack Man, Bruce Lee is just kind of a jerk. So when they do have their fight, Bruce Lee is really thee bad guy. The man I was rooting against. Which is a problem for a movie called Birth of the Dragon.
I credit the movie for the quality of the marital arts action. The two supporting character’s in Steve’s movie really are good and the director knows how to film them to look good. A fair number of steady shots that hold on the action to give you an impression that they are really fighting. Not a lot of chopped-up, quickly edited action. So that’s good. I just wish I cared that they were fighting at all.
Unfortunately, the story is kind of boring and focuses too much on Steve. The dueling worldviews of martial arts is occasionally interesting but also more-than-occasionally reads like a fortune cookie. The dialog is kind of bad and cookie-cutter. Plus the final action scene where Bruce Lee takes on the mobsters to free the girl from servitude feels more like a Bruce Lee movie than any alleged reality the film is supposedly based on.
There was a good movie to make about this story… this just wasn’t it.
Steve deserved better.
Score: 62