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Game of Death, 1978
Pressured by mobsters, a martial arts film star named Billy (Bruce Lee) is the victim of a series of "accidents" on set. When one such mishap nearly kills him, he takes the opportunity to fake his death and go underground. But when his girlfriend is kidnapped by the mobsters, Billy must come out of hiding to save her.
I had known going into this film that Bruce Lee had died during the making of it. But I had not realized the extent of the story. The footage of Lee used here is from an entirely different story--one that has nothing to do with mobsters and movie-making.
It is almost hard to rate this as a film, because the quality of what is on screen is so variable.
The downsides here are obvious--for almost the first 3/4 of the film, there is heavy, HEAVY use of doubles, meaning that Lee's character is off screen or has his back to the camera or is buried under absurd "disguises" almost all of the time. It creates a distance from the character because he doesn't feel real. And in trying to center a film on a character we never really see or hear, the film ends up very flat and bland, with no secondary characters stepping up to liven it up a bit.
The positive, however, is that most of the footage that Lee filmed before his death was for the climax of the original movie. Thus despite the clunky first 3/4, the final act is really engaging as Billy must fight level after level of baddie (including Kareem Abdul-Jabar!) on the way to rescuing his gal.
This one is worth checking out on two levels: both for the absurdity of the way they tried to cobble together the first 3/4, and the incredibly fun final showdowns.
Game of Death, 1978
Pressured by mobsters, a martial arts film star named Billy (Bruce Lee) is the victim of a series of "accidents" on set. When one such mishap nearly kills him, he takes the opportunity to fake his death and go underground. But when his girlfriend is kidnapped by the mobsters, Billy must come out of hiding to save her.
I had known going into this film that Bruce Lee had died during the making of it. But I had not realized the extent of the story. The footage of Lee used here is from an entirely different story--one that has nothing to do with mobsters and movie-making.
It is almost hard to rate this as a film, because the quality of what is on screen is so variable.
The downsides here are obvious--for almost the first 3/4 of the film, there is heavy, HEAVY use of doubles, meaning that Lee's character is off screen or has his back to the camera or is buried under absurd "disguises" almost all of the time. It creates a distance from the character because he doesn't feel real. And in trying to center a film on a character we never really see or hear, the film ends up very flat and bland, with no secondary characters stepping up to liven it up a bit.
The positive, however, is that most of the footage that Lee filmed before his death was for the climax of the original movie. Thus despite the clunky first 3/4, the final act is really engaging as Billy must fight level after level of baddie (including Kareem Abdul-Jabar!) on the way to rescuing his gal.
This one is worth checking out on two levels: both for the absurdity of the way they tried to cobble together the first 3/4, and the incredibly fun final showdowns.