Meng nan da zei yan zhi hu

Dragon (Bruce Li) is a respected police investigator in HongKong. He's frustrated failing to save a jumper. He and his partner are assigned a tough counterfeit ring. Han Tin Lung is the head of the criminal organization. His son Han Chin Wei has used his Japanese friend Kimura (Bolo Yeung) and stolen paper from London to create perfect counterfeit money. Donna is the beautiful daughter of a criminal colleague who arrives with plans of her own.

This is a HongKong Bruceploitation. There is a lot of hand to hand combat and female frontal nudity. It's pure B-movie. The problem is that Bruce Li is a blank and he adds little to the movie. The best parts come from the villain side. I'm fascinated with the Hans and Donna. They could be the Godfather but Bruce Li keeps interjecting himself into the movie. The hand to hand fighting is good at first but after awhile, the choreography is repetitive and it gets boring. This may be better than most Bruceploitations but that's not saying much.

The Image of Bruce Lee is another chopsocky film which uses the name of Hong Kong action legend Bruce Lee in its title without actually featuring him! It, in fact, stars Bruce Li, as opposed to Bruce Lee. Confused, already? Seemingly, this sort of patter was par for the course in this sub-genre of film.

Its story is about two undercover cops who attempt to stop a criminal gang of counterfeiters. Despite beginning quite promisingly with Li, kitted out in a yellow jump-suit, trying to save a suicidal man on a high-rise roof, this one quickly descends to the level of another mediocre martial arts action movie. There's plenty of kung fu fighting to be fair but this is strictly for die-hard fans of this kind of thing but is a rather forgettable experience otherwise.

Bruce Li surprised me in this one. Oh, the martial arts are still mediocre, but he's not trying to be Bruce Lee. In fact, Li is a cop in search of plates. He ends up fighting usually against groups of guys. Apparently, the word "backup" wasn't invented until after this movie. You really appreciate Fist of Fury when fights the entire japanese class in the dojo. In IOBL, Bruce Li runs after Bolo in search of luggage and proceeds to fight the entire class. Man, you can see how many "one-on-one" cue attacks there are while extras just stand in the circle. So to sum it up:

Fists of Fury dojo fight: FIERCE and FAST.

Image of Bruce Lee dojo fight: FUNNY!!

It really is fun to see Bruce in a non Bruceploitatic role. I think he must've been hot fighting in that brown leather coat cause he never takes it off in battles. Man, it's durable! The frightening part of this movie is seeing Bolo flirt. Plus, his loud garish suits with killer lapels. The Boss is same boss from Bruce Lee's the Big Boss, but he doesn't add that much to the film. Come to think of it, the funniest part is the balcony scene where some guy does a flying kick at Bruce and the slo-mo effect goes on. Bruce just moves to the side and this hapless dolt of a henchman does the high hurdle over the rail. Also, handcuffs can be a deadly weapon.

There's some gratuitous nudity of Donna...I think that was her name, whatever. They thought including her would be enough to fool the viewer and grab your attention. Well, it worked for me!! Especially the nude swimming. Also, when she tells Bruce Li that he looks like Bruce Lee and asks if he wants to do movies, Li responds with "Not interested!" HAHAHAHA. See, he was "ACTING".

Watch this cool flick for chases, naughty bits, and the balcony fight....and the Bruce Li rope climbing in the yellow tracksuit!!

This film can be taken in two ways. First, it is indeed a "Bruce Clone" film, starring Bruce Li, the best of the Bruce Lee imitators. On that level, it can be enjoyed for the usual "swinging arms" chop-sock 'fu film nonsense we loved so well in the late 1970s.

However, oddly enough, the cast and crew seem to be quite aware that their whole effort is blatantly absurd.

Consequently, their are subtle but undeniable elements of self-parody in throughout the film. I will only describe the opening sequence: A man looking like a minor business executive is standing on a roof top, threatening to commit suicide. Bruce Li, dressed in the yellow-and-red gymnastic jump-suit long associated with Bruce Lee through publicity photos for his uncompleted last film (Game of Death) , climbs up five stories and jumps out to grab the exec by the arm. Unfortunately, it's a prosthetic arm. The force of the grab tears off the arm and inadvertently sends the exec five stories to his death. Bruce Li stands there looking at the prosthetic limb with an expression like, "hey, this never happened to the other guy!" Final underscore for this self-parody is when another character looks at Bruce Li and says: "Has anyone ever told you you look like Bruce Lee?" - Well, I'm not!" Bruce Li responds.

This is all pretty much 'in-joke' stuff; to appreciate the humor of this film, one has to have seen all of the real Bruce Lee films, and a good many Bruce-Clone films as well. But I have, so I had a blast.

A pair of undercover detectives (played by Bruce Li and Chang Leih) work together in an effort to try and bring down a counterfeiting operation headed by Han Tin Lung (played by Yin-Chieh Han who previously appeared in FISTS OF FURY) and Kimura (played by Bolo Yeung who previously appeared in ENTER THE DRAGON).

While this is a bit slow getting off the ground and initially seems a little confusing, it eventually reveals several surprise twists, turns and revelations which brings everything together in an understandable fashion by the film's end. The best thing about this movie in fact isn't its many Kung-Fu fighting showdowns, although I did enjoy the final climactic showdown between Bruce Li's character and the villainous father and son duo, but instead the character of Donna (played by Danna), who manages to keep her character bubbly and sweet despite exhibiting a considerable amount of flesh in a number of nude scenes. Her character's often humorous and amusing interactions with practically all the men she encounters in the film provides this one's most entertaining moments and she steals nearly every scene in which she appears.

The main problem with the fight scenes is it's far too obvious in most scenes that blows really are not being landed so they never become as fully convincing as they were intended to be. The title IMAGE OF BRUCE LEE seems to come from one scene in which Donna mentions to Bruce Li that he looks just like Bruce Lee and should be in the movies.