Li Xiao Long yu wo

Bruce Lee: His Last Days (1976)

* (out of 4)

This Shaw Brothers production has become quite controversial over the years because no one, other than Bruce Lee and Betty Ting Pei, really know if it's true or not. There have been many conspiracy theories to what really killed the martial arts superstar but many put the blame on Pei who plays herself in this bio pic that tells about her relationship with Lee (Danny Lee). I can't say I'm a Lee expert so I really don't know too much about his personal life but hopefully it was a lot more exciting than this film. The version I watched was the English dub, which was also P&S so I'm not sure if the original version would be better but I seriously doubt it. What we have here is a pretty weak little film that doesn't manage to do anything except bore the viewer. We have several martial arts scenes but the majority of them are badly staged and come off rather funny. Danny Lee gives a pretty performance as Lee, although the screenplay really doesn't give him a lot to do. For the most part he plays Lee as a practical joker and I think these scenes come off as the most interesting in the film. Danny Lee is able to bring out this comic side of the legend but how much of this side is true is something I don't know. His fighting scenes are rather boring but again, this has more to do with the way they are staged. Pei on the other hand isn't very good playing herself. I'm really not sure what it was but she came off pretty fake from start to finish as if she was really wanting to show herself in a certain way and didn't want to steer off of that. I'm not sure if that's fair to say but that's the way she came off. The film runs just under 90-minutes but there are very few interesting marks. I'm really not sure what the point of the film was as the film never knows how to look at Pei, her relationship with Lee or even say much about the legend himself. In the end it comes off as something incredibly boring, which makes it rather worthless when there are better documentaries, bio pics and Lee's own movies out there.

Perhaps the original Chinese language, Shawscope version of this film is better than the horribly pan and scanned, English dubbed version recently aired on Showtime. Doubtful, though, as this features unimaginative and unexciting martial arts sequences and the unappealing presence of Betty Ting-Pei, whose hardknock life is the primary focus of this purported tribute to Bruce Lee. Simply wretched.