Bruce Lee: A Dragon Story
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| Bruce Lee: A Dragon Story | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Shih Ti |
| Starring | Bruce Li Cheng Fu-Hung Yue Fan Ngai Yat-Ping |
| Release date(s) | 1974 |
| Running time | 90 min. |
| Language | Cantonese |
Bruce Lee: A Dragon Story (also known as Bruce Lee: Super Dragon and Superdragon) is a heavily fictionalized biopic about martial arts actor Bruce Lee. The film centres on his supposed affair with actress Betty Ting-Pei. This lurid film is notable for being the first biopic of Bruce Lee[1] (it was released the year following his death), the debut film of notorious Lee imitator Ho Chung-Tao (A/K/A Bruce Li), and quite possible the first film in the odd Bruceploitation subgenre.
[edit] Synopsis
The film opens with a pre-fame Bruce Lee (Bruce Li) delivering newspapers in Seattle, Washington. (However, he is seen distributing copies of a Washington D.C. newspaper). We then see Lee competing in various martial arts tournaments and eventually landing a role on the television show The Green Hornet. He also gets married, and has to fight a whole lot of challengers.
Later, Lee goes to Hong Kong, and, after being discovered on television by the wife of director Lo Wei, is given a contract at Golden Harvest.
Lee also meets and falls in love with actress Betty Ting-Pei, who announces that she is pregnant with his love child (the film's most radical departure from the facts of Lee's life). The soap opera-style romance takes over the film in its second half, and at one point there is a love triangle between Lee, Betty Ting-Pei, and one of Lee's co-stars (almost certainly based on Nora Miao).
[edit] Criticism
Bruce Lee: A Dragon Story is almost universally considered one of Bruce Li's worst movies. Many have lambasted the film for its tendency to stray heavily from the facts of Lee's life, for the poor pacing, the lack of frequent fight scenes, and the soapy love story.
Mark Pollard's review for KungFuCinema.com is typical:
"It's a highly fictionalized account that gets many of the facts wrong and aside from a few exceptions, manages to trample over Lee's memory without being even marginally entertaining... This film really isn't for anyone except Bruce Li fans or anyone fascinated by the exploitive world of Bruce Lee knockoffs. While it at least does not try to pass off Li as a clone of the real Bruce which lesser films attempted, it does degrade his life by playing loose with the facts. Did Lee ever have an affair? I don't have an answer, but I do know he wasn't the near lifeless husk of a man who appears in this near lifeless husk of a film."[2]
Bruce Li himself has also spoken about his dislike for this and his other early films.
"After my first movie, the films would be crafted around the life and times of Bruce Lee. However I would like to make an important point, I did not like these films. Without my knowledge or consent the producers changed my name to Li Hsiao Lung."[3]
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