Bruce Lee, the Legend

While this is Raymond Chow's official "Golden Harvest" tribute movie about the great Bruce Lee, it makes some interesting, and to me, odd choices of things to include and/or exclude. For example, it mentions his disappointment in not being cast in the lead of the American TV series "Kung Fu," but not the key point that he created the whole idea for the show. Continuing through to his untimely death in Hong Kong in 1973, we get to hear several of the rumors about it, most notably that he was in the midst of an affair with a popular Asian "femme fatale" of the time. But the far more popular theory that traditional Chinese martial-arts extremists loathed Bruce's U. S. schools' equal opportunity education of all sorts of "western" (non-Asian) peoples, and had some sort of deadly poison introduced to kill him. Not a word about the non-salacious story that doesn't insult his and wife Linda's memory! So, I grant it 6/10 stars for a lot of fight footage, some never before seen BTS, but it gave pretty short shrift to his ethical and philosophical POV, both of which were the true essence of the man.

For the hardcore, and even to casual Bruce Lee fans, this documentary might not give much insight into the life of legendary martial artist. The documentary mostly covers the films Bruce made for Golden Harvest (no wonder, the documentary is produced by the same company, and it is called 'The Official Golden Harvest Tribute'), and leaves out many interesting stuff outside these films that made Bruce Lee an international superstar. Most interesting part of the documentary was probably (at least for me) that it concentrated good enough time on Bruce's earlier Hong Kong films that he made before leaving to United States.

There are much more insightful documentaries about Bruce Lee out there, but this one is still worth to see as it is honestly sweet with couple of interesting interviews with Lee's Hong Kong co-stars. The film is well put together, and when this is your first film about Bruce Lee, then you probably learn quite many things about the man.

The film that would make me a life long fan of Bruce Lee, who died two years before my birth. Although my further studies would later prove this documentary to be a little underdeveloped and one-sided, but those who are willing to suspend their disbelief might find this to be an interesting watch. Golden Harvest truly knows how to immortalize its former star.

Bruce Lee, the Legend (1984)

*** (out of 4)

Good, 90-minute documentary taking a look at the life, career of death of martial arts legend Bruce lee.

BRUCE LEE, THE LEGEND is without question a good documentary that features some wonderful stuff but there's no question that it falls well short of being the definitive film out there. I will be the first to admit that I don't know too much about Lee and while this documentary answered many questions, it still left me wonderful a lot more. I think the strengths of the film include some of the wonderful footage we get of various movies from Lee's childhood. We learn that his father was a professional actor and we get to see some terrific clips from some early Hong Kong movies. Even better is that we get to see a lot of behind-the-scenes footage to his films including THE BIG BOSS, THE Chinese CONNECTION and THE WAY OF THE DRAGON.

There's a lot of good information given about the actor's personal life, his rise to fame and why even Steve McQueen was amazed by his talents. The documentary does have some very weak spots including the direction, which is just all over the place. While the stories being told are entertaining, there's no doubt that the way they're told is a bit off and the overall film just doesn't have a very good pace to it. Still, thanks to the footage, fans of Lee will still want to check this out.

An older documentary but surprisingly watchable. Really dives deep into Bruce's early years. But also inadvertently throws more mystery on his death.