 his
is another of the 70s chop socky films with a star who followed a simple plan: "I
look sort of like Bruce Lee, so I'll change my name to a phonetic
version of his and try to become a bigger star now that he's dead."
This one stars Bruce Li, and no, there's no reason at all to include
"Bruce Lee" in the title other than blatant marketing
bullshit. The movie has nothing to do with him, or his Jeet Kun Do style, or
anything else.
To the scores, which
are only meant for comparison to other chop socky reviews.
Fists
of Bruce Lee, 1978
Script/Story: 4
Acting/Casting: 3
Action: 6
Humor: NA
Horror: NA
Combat Realism: 5
Eye Candy: 1
Fun Factor: 5
Replayability: 4
Overall: 3.5
Production Values
I don't usually worry much about eye candy in these types of films, but
this one gets a special mention for being the single worst transfer I've
ever seen on a DVD. It looks like they took the original wide screen movie and
stretched it out to fill the full screen, top to bottom, but didn't do
it very well. So the sides of every scene are cut off, and the
people all look 8 feet tall and skinny. Simply putting this one into a
decent letter boxed format would have improved the visuals and the movie
substantially. You can't adjust it either; wide screen and other options
are grayed out on the display menu.
Story
The plot is hard to follow even if you don't fast forward over all of
the talking scenes. It's set in modern day (well, 1978 modern day) Hong
Kong, and has something to do with the Hong Kong mafia, as rival crime
bosses struggle for power. Lots of different gangs fight in
relatively non-lethal and non-weapon fashion, Bruce Li wins every fight
he's in, and lots of extras get knocked out. There's a huge cast, with
maybe 50 actors shown, of which at least 20 have multiple speaking
scenes. The rest are just random thugs (If you can call 5-foot tall
Chinese guys in eye-splitting 70s leisure suits "thugs.") who
shout a word or two before heading into the heavily-choreographed
combat.
Bruce is posing as an electronics expert who is installing a security
system for one of the crime bosses, who just happens to have a cute
daughter. Yes, I know, what are the odds? These are the least violent
crime bosses in history, who have only unskilled and unarmed martial
arts students for protection/muscle, so you've really got to wonder how
they hustled up the money for the palatial mansions they inhabit.
Numerous fights ensue, none of them for any good reason, until
eventually there's one last battle where all of the crime bosses are in the
same place, and it turns out that Bruce is an undercover Interpol agent.
He wins, of course, after doing the old, "Handsprings make me
bulletproof!" avoidance trick, when one of the bad guys finally
pulls out a gun. The girl survives too, but since these types of movies
are always pretty much sexless, he doesn't get any. Not exactly Bond,
Bruce Bond, is he?
Martial Arts
This movie has a ton of fight scenes. I mean a ton, like 20 scenes
of at least a few minutes in length. Lots of them have multiple guys going,
usually 4 or 5 after Bruce, but there are plenty of other random gang
rumbles, where a dozen or more of the instantly-forgettable lesser
characters are out there punching and kicking at each other at the same
time. Almost all of the fighting is empty handed, though there are a few
scenes with poorly-handled nun chucks, inexpertly-wielded knives, or
horribly-swung staves. Do not watch this one for the weapon stuff, since
it's just dreadful.
The fighters are fairly no-nonsense, and some of the moves look like
they might hurt, but it's all pretty much touch style. Hit them, they
fall down, you move on. No one ever does any arm breaks, or joint locks,
or choke/submission holds, and no one is much on finishing off an enemy
once they go down. They land a couple of punches, knock someone down,
wait chivalrously while the punched guy does that "press hand to
mouth to check for blood; then look intense and furious" bit, then
go back into it. A few guys are killed by weapons, but mostly they just
get bloodlessly punched out, with the occasional faux-Bruce Lee
one-footed stomach stomp, which invariably results in the downed guy
straining and holding the foot for a moment, before going theatrically
limp.
Everyone in the movie can fight, at least, to some extent. They all do
basically the same types of Kung Fu though, with nothing high flying.
Some guys are more athletic and do some leaping kicks, and everyone is
flexible enough to do head high crescent kicks and back kicks, but they
never look very impressive or threatening. There's really no point in
kicking if your kicks aren't any more powerful than your jabs, other
than that it looks better on film. And since this is a movie, that's
probably why they chose them.
If you've done any martial arts it's hard to watch most of these fights,
since they are so obviously choreographed, and no one ever takes the
openings they get. Fighters are constantly throwing long, slow punches,
or swinging kicks that aren't going to hurt even if they hit. Step into
them and land a hard punch, or kick out their plant foot and break their
ankle or knee. Anything but ducking back, or just ducking the kick. They
never even have any nice sequences, where one guy does a high kick, the
other guy spins under it and throws his own kick, the first guy parries
that, etc. They just take turns, politely and calmly, kicking at each
other. Reminded me a bit of the
Tae Kwan Do tournament we attended a couple of weeks ago, though
honestly, those kids had a lot more intensity and speed with their
attacks than the guys do in this movie.
Overall
The combat scenes in this one definitely grade higher in quantity than
in quality, but if you just want a to watch a lot of different guys punch
and kick each other, over and over again, this film should scratch your
itch.
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