Bruce Lee: The Man, The Myth

Bruce Lee: The Man, The Myth, originally released as Li Hsiao Lung chuan chi (Chinese: 李小龍傳奇) and also known as Bruce Lee - True Story, is a 1976 Bruceploitation biopic that stars Bruce Li (A/K/A Ho Chung Tao) as famed martial artist Bruce Lee. The film chronicles his life beginning with Lee leaving China to go to University in Seattle. Most of the benchmarks of Lee's later life (cast in Green Hornet television series, marriage to Linda Lee, stardom in Hong Kong, death) are covered, with a somewhat less tenuous relationship to the truth as in previous Lee biopics.

Interestingly, Linda Lee is played by Lynda Hirst, an English women who was an army wife stationed in Hong Kong at the time of the filming. The director, having searched, unsuccessfully, for some time for a suitable 'Linda Lee' among available actresses, came across Lynda Hirst whilst out shopping in a local market and remarked on her resemblance to the late star's wife. On learning she was a 'Westerner' he immediately cast her in the (small) role. Lynda's real life sons can also be seen, very briefly, in the movie as Lee's children.

Reaction

Fans of Bruceploitation movies almost universally consider this the best of the low-budget Bruce Lee biopics that were released during the 1970s, and some call it Bruce Li's best film as well.

In his three-part Bruceploitation essay for Impact Magazine, Dean Meadows writes:

"This was a bigger and better production, providing a larger budget, international locations and the name Ho Chung Tao on the opening credits. Upon its release, earlier, scandalous elements of the exploitational deluge had all but disappeared. Overlong scenes of the Little Dragon "in action" with Betty Ting Pei were absent from the production and the full contact fury that people had been waiting to see from a Bruce Lee bio-pic was finally realised. Every director can of course be afforded a little artistic license and whilst a number of fight scenes were completely fictionalised, Ng See Yuen had undoubtedly created a fitting tribute to the memory of the undisputed "King Of Kung Fu". With first class choreography, Ho Chung Tao mirrored the Little Dragon in a number of standout fights."

Outside of fan circles, the film is predictably received with less enthusiasm. The Time Out Film Guide, for example:

"Numbingly unimaginative and exploitative biography. Would you trust a film that opens on a '70s street scene and captions it 'Hong Kong 1958'?."^[1]

Inaccuracies

Bruce Lee: The Man, The Myth is one of the more accurate Bruce Lee biopics, in that it offers a reasonable facsimile of Lee's life without resorting to scandal or speculation (except in the final scene). That being said, it is still plagued by a number of inaccuracies.

• Lee's mask for his The Green Hornet TV role of Kato did not include a pigtail; it was the servitude of the character's civilian guise as a houseboy that Bruce found distasteful.

• Lee is seen being challenged by extras on movie sets. These incidents are technically true, although the film blows them out of proportion.

• The fight scene in Rome is pure fiction, as most of the other action sequences.

• Lee was not rejected for the lead role on the TV show Kung Fu until after he returned to Hong Kong in the early 1970s (most biographies and biopics fudge the facts as this film did to make the story more interesting).

• The film shows Bruce Lee being attacked and killed by triads which is a myth.

• The film shows Bruce Lee walking in a forest as a recluse.

• While filming The Big Boss, Lee is challenged by a local Thai boxer. This fight happened in reality and is a fight that Bruce won, but in the movie the fight is blown way out of proportion.

References

External links

• Bruce Lee: The Man, The Myth at the Internet Movie Database