Bruce Lee is born on a rainy night. As a kid, he gets in trouble for fighting and is publicly spanked by his teacher. Angry, he throws a flying kick at the camera and the opening credits begin.
The credits sequence, it must be said, is a thing of beauty. It’s nothing more than a collection of scenes of Bruce Li as Bruce Lee doing Kung Fu while a disco song (“He’s a Dragon, He’s a Hero”) about Bruce Lee plays. In my humble opinion, more movies should start this way.
Anyway, Bruce (Bruce) goes to America to find work in the movies. Almost immediately, he is disgusted by the stereotyped roles that producers want him to play and he walks off the set. Frustrated by the lack of roles in Hollywood, Bruce returns to Hong Kong to make movies and becomes an overnight sensation. He then begins a rivalry with an American boxing champion while continuing to push himself (too far) to be the best.
Not to be confused with The Dragon Lives Again (which for me, is the high-water mark of Bruceploitation genre), Dragon Lives isn’t as wild and crazy as some Bruceploitation movies, which is simultaneously refreshing and disappointing. I will give it credit for going a bit deeper than most Bruceploitation flicks. It may be factually inaccurate a lot of the time, but at least it addresses the issue of racism that Bruce fought so hard against. While it comes up a little short in the weirdness department, you have to respect the artistic license it takes to have Bruce sport a mustache mid-movie (even while recreating some of his most iconic moments) with no explanation given whatsoever. The disco song is pretty catchy too, which is good because they play it a lot.
Dragon Lives is similar in many respects to Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story as there are scenes with Bruce, his wife Linda, and their son Brandon. Although the weird stuff is kept to a minimum, you can appreciate the scenes where he spurns his family to achieve physical perfection by locking himself in his green-tinted home gym (it looks more like a dungeon) where he practices against a machine that’s just arms that come out of holes in the wall. It also earns points for addressing his relationship with Betty Ting Pei. The ending is good for a laugh when Bruce and Betty bang while a coffee pot symbolically fills up in the foreground. Then after he does the deed, Bruce gets up, there’s an earthquake (or something), and he dies. What?
That might be enough weirdness for a regular movie. For a Bruceploitation flick, it’s somewhat lacking. Still, I unabashedly love the genre, so I more or less got what I was hoping for.
AKA: King of Kung Fu. AKA: He’s a Legend, He’s a Hero.
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