Of course, Bruce was born in San Francisco, raised in Hong Kong, filmed his movies in Hong Kong. He only lived here for about 5 years. But I think it’s fair to say they were important years. Any biography of Bruce mentions that he studied philosophy, right? Well that was right here at our University of Washington. He actually majored in drama, so give us partial credit for his acting too. He started his first kung fu schools here. He met his wife here. He married her here. When he died his family still lived here, so he’s buried here, and so is Brandon. We still don’t have a Bruce Lee statue, but Linda and Shannon Lee are trying to build The Bruce Lee Action Museum here. So we got a legitimate claim, I think. We are a Bruce Lee town.

That’s why it’s so embarrassing that some dumb motherfuckers dropped the ball and got us completely erased from this biopic. The University wouldn’t let them film on campus because the script depicted one UW athlete being racist toward Bruce. That seems like denial. I have a hard time believing things like that never happened to him. But more importantly, Bruce hands the racist’s ass to him (here you go – I think you dropped this) and in the very next scene the guy and all his friends are converted into Bruce’s students. The movie hardly dwells on racism. It portrays his college years as a good experience.

But somebody said no, and according to the commentary track by director Rob Cohen (DRAGONHEART, THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR, THE FAST AND THE DRAGON FURIOUS) the city of Seattle wasn’t very cooperative either. So he got pissed and rewrote the script (and history). In the movie Bruce goes to college in California, Linda is a California girl, and some version of Ruby Chow (famous restaurant owner and politician in Seattle) is in San Francisco’s Chinatown instead of ours. Oh well, they’re basically the same – liberal west coast port cities where Bruce Lee had schools. Smash together DIRTY HARRY and McQ.

It makes me sad that they didn’t film in Seattle, but I guess it’s no big deal because it doesn’t seem like too many people remember this one anyway, or have any respect for it. They complain about all the Hollywood bullshit. It gives him fictional fights – an alley brawl with the cooks at Ruby Chow’s (with him balancing on a wire and dodging cleavers), one with American sailors (where he does a flip and perches nimbly on a table like Spiderman), a huge grudge match on the set of THE BIG BOSS (captured on film but then he destroys it), and even some nightmares or visions where he’s chased by an armored demon (Sven Ole-Thorsen). The part that seems the most like Hollywood bullshit is the duel for the right to teach kung fu to non-Chinese students, but that’s based on a real event. Of course, the movie still has to set it in a spooky BLOODSPORT type temple instead of a normal martial arts studio, and they make it the source of his debilitating back injury (actually caused by weightlifting) and create dramatic conflict by having him hide it from his wife (in real life she was there).

Despite all this I really like DRAGON and think people are too hard on it. I mean have you seen any of the Hong Kong Bruce Lee biopics? Because the Hong Kong bullshit is worse than the Hollywood bullshit. BRUCE LEE: THE MAN/THE MYTH for example just has him getting in a bunch of fights to prove that Chinese kung fu is better than the fighting techniques of other countries. Then at the end it says that he might’ve faked his death and will come back in 1983. This has less lies and more truth. Compared to those movies DRAGON seems like the Maysles brothers followed Bruce around and filmed his whole life. Yeah, so it has some silly exaggerations about the type of life he lived. But it also shows him as a fully dimensional human being. It shows his family life, his philosophy, his rebellion against tradition, his struggle to become a leading man despite Hollywood small-mindedness and racism. It shows some difficulties with being in an interracial relationship in America of the 1960s.

The script is based mostly on Linda Lee’s book The Bruce Lee Only I Knew, so it really does show sides of him nobody else had bothered to show before, and (through Lauren Holly as Linda) it shows a female perspective of Bruce as boyfriend, husband, lover and father. It’s the rare Hollywood movie with a love scene between a white woman and Asian man. It’s not only about why he’s awesome, but why she loved him.

I mean, they try to show him being awesome too. The fight scenes are fun and well shot, although it’s kind of weird that they’re supposed to be real life but use a more exaggerated style than what Lee tried to do in his movies. For example the first one has Bruce doing a flip and tearing his shirt off Incredible Hulk style. But they do pay tribute to many of Bruce’s moves and weapons (of course they got him using nunchakas and wooden staffs). Although they could be a more accurate depiction of his fights I don’t agree with the complaints about them being in the movie. I personally believe that all biopics would be improved by adding 5 or 6 kung fu scenes, and here’s a rare example where it makes sense. I mean admit it, RAY wasn’t bad, but we’d all own the DVD if it had a bunch of sword fights and stuff.

As a tribute to all the other Bruce Lee imitators, Jason Scott Lee doesn’t look very much like Bruce Lee at all. But he strays from their tradition by actually trying to imitate him. Somehow with his facial expressions and poses he makes a believable (if bulkier and rounder-faced) Bruce Lee. Jason Scott not only had to imitate Bruce’s Jeet Kune Do, he also had to recreate his charm and chemistry with his wife and the pain of his struggle to make it in America. Like Will Smith in ALI he has a thankless job, trying the impossible feat of portraying an iconic human force whose presence and charisma are impossible to duplicate. But I think he does an impressive job and deserves much more credit for this performance than he ever got. And for Christ’s sake somebody give him some good movies to be in. He’s a good actor.

The movie very intentionally ends on the set of ENTER THE DRAGON and doesn’t show his death or deal with the rumors about what he was up to and what caused it and all that. It’s true, there’s no reason at this point to dwell on his death. This movie celebrates what he accomplished in his short life, and it makes it clear that his spirit is still out there. He had an enormous impact on the martial arts (especially what we now call MMA), on martial arts movies, on the careers of Asian actors in western countries, maybe even on racial relations in general. And just as Bruce Lee’s spirit lives on in our hearts, DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY’s theme song lives on in our trailers and inspirational sports broadcasts. Examples below.

starting about 1 minute in:

1:37 in:

50 seconds:

1:50:

1:16:

and there’s this one:

(of course that one’s not as weird as when I heard the theme from SUSPIRIA used for Olympic gymnastics)

[ratings]

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The movie begins in the ’90s with a group of babies being taken out of a hospital into military custody (wonder if the parents noticed?) where they will be raised to be super soldiers. The opening is a montage of these soldiers from infancy to their 40s, being indoctrinated, training and participating in various intergalactic conflicts. I was impressed that I could immediately tell which kid was supposed to be Kurt Russell. I thought they did an amazing job of finding a kid who looked like him, but then I found out they just cast his son, which is kind of cheating. Anyway this character’s name is Todd, but don’t worry, if you forget that it’s tattooed on his face, they all have their names and numbers tattooed on their faces. (I honestly think it would be cool if the movie was called TODD.)

Of course, they get the usual kind of training – running, shooting practice, etc. – but also they have to watch three dobermans fight a boar without looking away. So you can understand how this kid grows up into a stoic, glassy-eyed Kurt Russell, sort of channeling Michael Dudikoff in AMERICAN NINJA. I don’t mean that as mockery either, I thought Kurt Russell was great in this role. He is credible as a great soldier and also as a sort of Frankenstein monster who doesn’t know how to relate to normal humans.

The real story begins when the soldiers are in peace time (”in between wars”), pretty much just sitting there motionless. (That’s what they do.) Todd is the best of the bunch, so he gets to sit at the front. Then Jason Isaacs (with sinister mustache) shows up to brag about his new model of super soldiers, distinguished by their tank tops and led by Caine (Jason Scott Lee, now bald and looking about twice as big as he was when he played Bruce Lee.)

Gary Busey, who commands the old models, wants to stick with them because they’ve done a good job and he doesn’t see how these new ones could be so much better. (Sort of how I feel about Blu-Ray vs. DVD.) The difference is that the new ones were created from ideal DNA profiles, no more of that bullshit of just taking any old baby and training it from birth. They’re starting earlier.
So to test them out, Todd and Caine are pitted against each other in a series of tests, including running 15 miles, climbing a chain, and fighting to the death. I like this because Busey is standing up for Todd and the others, he obviously feels bad for them being tossed off like obsolete machines, and yet he still treats them like machines, commanding them to fight other people. At best he’s treating them like fighting chickens.

Not surprisingly, Caine wins, and Todd and two others are thrown in the garbage. But Todd’s not quite dead, so he ends up a refugee on the landfill planet where all the garbage gets dumped.

So then it’s kind of a western, this mysterious killer drifts into a colony formed from the survivors of a space ship crash. They welcome him. He saves a guy’s life. But he scares the shit out of everybody, and their merrymaking scares him. It seems like anything could set him off. He trains by using a big metal engine as a punching bag. Then a guy gives him a scarf.

In a way, Todd is the classic troubled Vietnam vet. He is John Rambo. They taught him how to kill but they didn’t teach him how to turn it off. In fact, they literally didn’t teach him anything else, he’s been doing this shit since he was born. I bet he never even read Paddington Bear or anything like that.
So Todd gets cast away from the colony, but when those people are endangered by the super soldiers who also rejected him he chooses the side of the civilians.

This is a beautiful action movie setup for many reasons. He gets to prove himself to the colony by showing that his skills can help them. He gets to prove himself to the military by destroying their supposedly superior new models. And the geography and characteristics of the battleground have been carefully and subtly set up earlier in the movie, making for some satisfying payoffs. It’s also cool because he does take them on single-handedly. Connie Nielsen tells him they are not cowards and that they will help, so you figure he’ll teach them some moves and give them weapons. That’s what usually happens. But he tells them no, he will handle it himself, so you figure at some point he’ll be in trouble and then they’ll all come out and show their solidarity by risking themselves for him… but that doesn’t happen either. Nope, it’s Kurt Russell vs. everybody.

I can’t pretend to understand the reasons people hated this movie, but I bet part of it comes from the pedigree of the script. It was written by David Webb Peoples, one of the writers of BLADE RUNNER and the writer of UNFORGIVEN. At least one of those is a masterpiece, and most people would say both. They are movies that try to transcend their genre a little, and say something about the human condition or some shit like that. So that’s what people want from this movie, even knowing it’s the director of god damn MORTAL KOMBAT. Making expectations even higher, it was said that the script took place in the same world as BLADE RUNNER, and apparently there are some visual references to that in the movie (although I never noticed them).

Well, Paul W.S. Anderson is no Ridley-Scott-at-his-peak. I can see how this script could’ve been given to a better director and it could’ve been a masterpiece. If this same story took place in a more vivid and atmospheric type of world, like an ALIEN, it would be one for the record books. Instead it feels kind of like a precursor to CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK. I think that’s where my colleague Mr. Knowles was coming from 11 years ago when he complained that they didn’t have some battle that was in the script and the acting is the worst ever and the movie is shit. He was imagining the groundbreaking sci-fi masterpiece it maybe could’ve been, who knows.

But you know, coulda woulda shoulda. For what it is, SOLDIER is very enjoyable. When held up to UNFORGIVEN, yes, it is bad. But compared to UNIVERSAL SOLDIER it’s fucking great. If you see it as lowbrow sci-fi action it actually transcends its genre because it seems serious about this poetic idea of a killer finding a small piece of humanity. I’m not saying this is THEY LIVE or anything, but it’s somewhere near that neighborhood, the effective b-movie that also has a little something to say if you’re open to it.

[ratings]

There have been many fine biographies of this particular Bruce, among them Bruce Lee: The Man the Myth starring Bruce Li, who also starred in one called Dragon Story. In The Man the Myth Bruce is depicted as a nationalist always out to prove the superiority of chinese kung fu over thai boxing, japanese karate, and fat Italian-American guys. Bruce Li at times looks similar to Bruce Lee although the karate or kung fu I guess is not as good. He has a good haircut and pants in my opinion but still does not capture the essence of the man.

Other Bruce Lees have also played Bruce Lee from Bruce Le to Bruce Lei to Bruce Liang, Bruce Leung, Bruce Lin, to even Dragon Lee and Conan Lee. They have told Bruce Lee’s life story as well as his exploits beyond the grave, etc. I have read about a lot of fake Bruce Lee films but I do not know where to rent them. They have Bruce Lee Fights Back From Beyond the Grave, Black Dragon Revenges the Death of Bruce Lee, The Clones of Bruce Lee, Ilsa Meets Bruce Lee in the Devil’s Triangle, and Bruce Lee versus Gay Power.

I also had a friend named Bruce Leee, a bootlegger who was probably the best Bruce Lee I have ever known. I am not easy to please when it comes to Bruce Lees, I have been around the block a few times, so I was skeptical about this Jason Scott Leigh Bruce Lee from Dragon. I mean what kind of a Bruce Lee name is that nobody’s gonna fall for that one.

More than that, this dude doesn’t even look remotely like Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee was a lean and compact Chinese man, Jason Leigh is this beefy Hawaiian dude. When you dress Jason Leigh up to look nerdy, you see the muscles underneath so your not surprised when he jumps into the air and flexes to rip the shirt off mid-air. If Bruce Lee had done that, which I gotta tell you I’m skeptical whether he did, it would have been more of a surprise.

But somehow this Jason Leigh makes the movie work. I mean fuck Jim Carrey in The Man On the Moon, anybody can play a guy who wrestles girls. Bruce Lee is a whole different ballpark, one of the greatest fighting showmen who ever lived, and this Jason Leigh manages to capture much of Bruce’s physicality. When he starts fighting, his face curls up and his body twists and somehow, for some reason, this beefy little bastard contorts himself into Bruce Lee. Fucking incredible transformation in my opinion and one of the better acting jobs of the ’90s as far as I can tell.

Like most biopics this movie is a lying sack of shit as far as telling the true story of Bruce Lee, but I like how it combines Bruce’s life with his work and his philosophy. This is kind of a melodrama/romance type deal about his struggles, his emotions, relationship etc. but at the same time it is a full fledged karate movie. And I tell you the karate is good. In real life Bruce was a braggart and liked to prove his superiority by beating ass or at doing a high kick from behind to nip somebody’s unexpecting ear. There is a legend of him going buck wild on the set of Enter the Dragon, kicking a guy so hard that he broke the ribs of a different guy. That’s what Bruces are all about.

Well in the movie most of the fights are probaly complete hogwash historically but it makes for a better movie than if it was all Bruce doing exercise and signing contracts. The best scene in the movie is when Bruce is working as a dishwasher, and some chefs get jealous of him. So Booker T and the MGs or something starts playing and Bruce goes out into the alley and fights about five evil chefs with meat cleavers. Now it is one thing how Seagal is an asskicking chef in Under Siege, but could he take on five other asskicking chefs at once? I don’t think so.

Another thing I like is the way this deals with racism between whites and asians like Bruce lee. (We don’t use oriental anymore, by the way.) Usually in a movie this is completely a white and black issue, but I know for example in the joint there is all kinds of tension with puerto ricans, samoans, asians etc. It is a lot more complicated than just whites accepting blacks and even though it’s nothing deep it’s nice to see a movie that mentions that.

Bruce has to deal with his white wife’s mother who worries about “yellow babies.” He also gets called gook by the UW Husky Football team before beating them all up and then teaching them karate. This is why the University of Washington wouldn’t let them film on campus, even though they are very proud that Bruce Lee attended there they thought it would be in poor taste to admit that football players are racist idiots.

There are also some parts about a demon curse and whatnot.

This is a fun movie that does a pretty decent job of showing how Bruce Lee’s enormous talents elevated asskicking and even the Badass movement to the level of art and philosophy.

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It’s me Vern. Remember me, I write articles, win awards, etc. Today I am returning to my old shtick of reviewing straight to video sequels nobody asked for. Enjoy!

Actually the first picture I’m gonna deal with here is not completely un-asked for. The first movie CUBE was one of those small time cult movies that nobody is really rabid about but everybody kind of likes. The premise is that a group of strangers find themselves inside strange, symmetrical rooms with vault doors on each side. When they go through a door, they find themselves in a room exactly like the last one. And when they go through one of the doors in there, it’s another room exactly like that one. And when they go through one of the doors in there, it’s another room exactly like that one. And I could go on man. There’s nowhere to go. So of course they get into a George A. Romero type deal where they each have a different background and they argue and what not by they try to put aside their differences to solve the puzzle of “what in fuck’s name is going on here.” There is math, etc.

The acting is not all that great and none of the actors really have the kind of screen presence you want them to have. And the dialogue isn’t exactly on Romero’s level. But it’s such a good premise that you can’t help but enjoy it.

Well CUBE 2: HYPERCUBE is almost the same level of quality as the first one, its main downfall being that we’ve already seen this before. They do shake up the premise a little by introducing this idea of the “hypercube.” I don’t know if they made this up or if this is some actual thing that weirdo math guys are into, but the idea is that it is a 4 dimensional cube. There is length, width, depth, and the mysterious fourth dimension. Maybe time, maybe smell, who knows what it is. Only some math whiz guy I guess. Not me, I am a Writer.

Anyway what this hybercube deal does is when you go through one of the doors, you don’t necessarily go into the next cube over. Maybe you go into another room ten miles away. Maybe you go into another cube ten minutes ago and run into yourself. These poor fucks start getting shifted all around time and space and they get attacked by flying geometry and shit. I guess you would call it math-fi, like that movie π. (you know, like PIE.) It’s π in a box.

Now I don’t exactly remember who the poor saps were that got trapped in the first cube, but these ones are maybe a little more obvious. You can tell right away that you’re gonna get your standard business – they all are hiding a secret, one of them may or may not betray the others, etc. So it’s not that surprising that the Writer, Sean Hood, also did that piece of garbage HALLOWEEN RESURRECTION. Now, if I remember right – correct me if I’m wrong on this – that was the one that sucked the most out of all the HALLOWEEN pictures. I mean there were alot of sucky ones in the series, for example part 3, part 4, part 5 and of course part 6. But there was one that sucked more than any other and that would be the one that involved the internet, reality tv, Busta Rhymes dressed as Michael Meyers, etc.

Anyway fuck the writer, what does he do other than make up all the stuff that happens. Cinema is a visual medium, not a stuff happening medium. The filmatist here is Andrzej Sekula, who we all know and love as the cinematographist of RESERVOIR DOGS and PULP FICTION. Oh and who could forget COUSIN BETTE. This is his second time in the director chair after some movie called FAIT ACCOMPLI aka VOODOO DAWN. He also acts as director of photographing and I think the new look he gave to the cube, let’s call it the HYPERLOOK, is pretty nice.

Remember when they had hypercolor, it was a type of clothes that changes color from your body heat. what the fuck man.

Anyway the movie held my attention. There is less numbers and more geometry. There is a pretty grim ending that gives you a look into the outside world without being too specific about what’s going on. I mean it’s okay.

The other movie I saw recently is not quite up to that okay standard though. It is called DRACULA II: ASCENSION. I wish I could say it was DRACULA II: HYPERDRACULA but I’m afraid that would be a lie. I’m also sorry to say that this is not Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee or Frank Langella, who is an underrated Dracula. Instead it is “the thrilling sequel to DRACULA 2000.” Like the thrilling predecessor, it is directed by a guy named Patrick Lussier and thrillingly executive produced by Wes Craven.

I don’t know why the studios think we trust Wes Craven to present a movie to us. I mean I know he has done some pretty good stuff in the past, like the first and last Freddy pictures, and THE HILLS HAVE EYES, and to a certain extent THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS. As a director he’s hit and miss, but as an executive producer he has an unbroken record of garbage. I mean, have you seen MINDRIPPER? Or WISHMASTER? “Careful… what you weesh for…” I mean jesus man. And there was that remake of CARNIVAL OF SOULS. I never saw it but that’s because I read that it was about a serial killer clown.

Well DRACULA 2000 is probaly one of Mr. Craven’s better outings as an executive producer. I remember it being not all that bad, while also not all that good. I can’t really remember much about it so I was gonna refresh my memory by reading my review of it, but turns out it was so memorable I forgot to review it. Oh well. All I remember is that it followed most of the old resurrecting Dracula cliches from the Hammer movies pretty closely, in a year 2000 setting, with a little biblical twist tying in Dracula to Judas. I found it mildly entertaining.

But DRACULA II pretty much abandons Dracula. Instead it’s the story of a group of medical students with no screen presence who capture a vampire and think they can get money out of it. Other than the beginning and end, the entire movie takes place in an old mansion where they have the vampire tied up. I guess the vampire must be Dracula, but he sure doesn’t seem like the Dracula I know. He stays tied up until the last ten minutes of the movie. He is a spikey haired punk vampire. He’s not the suave, seductive sex machine Dracula of the movies, or the hideous, hypnotic Dracula of the book who has the power to control weather, spiders and moths and turn into a wolf and shit.

Just once I would like to see a movie Dracula that controls moths. Nobody ever controls moths in movies, in my opinion.

Anyway, this isn’t much of a Dracula movie. And I mean I understand when you can’t get the cast to return for a cheapass sequel. Obviously Taye Diggs wouldn’t come back for this. But Dracula is a FICTIONAL CHARACTER. It shouldn’t be hard to talk him into a meatier role than this. They basically have him do a walkon at the end, when he becomes Rutger Hauer in what I guess is the setup for the thrilling sequel to DRACULA II. (I didn’t realize he ever changed into Rutger Hauer, but the credits list Hauer as playing “Dracula 3″ and some other guy as “Dracula 2.”)

Brande Roderick plays one of the medical students, and in the film’s best scene they find themselves around a campfire discussing their careers. MC Hammer lectures Corey Feldman saying that celebrities have no right to complain about their lives when there are people out there really struggling to put food on their tables. Suddenly a coyote howls and Emmanuel Lewis jumps up and runs for the tent. He comes back with a rolled up towel. He unrolls it and inside is a huge knife, and he starts swinging it around!

Oh I’m sorry, that wasn’t DRACULA II, that was some tv show that Brande Roderick is on. Man you boys should watch that show. MC Hammer and Emmanuel Lewis share a bunkbed, and in the morning Hammer says, “Manny Moe, you get the bathroom first, followed by your co-pilot.” I never seen anything like it.

Anyway there is nothing even close to that entertaining in this movie, but there is one element that is worth singling out as “good.” In fact the opening scene had me convinced it was going to be a worthwhile viewing experience, since it starts off with a badass vampire slayer priest played by Jason Scott Leigh.

Jason Scott Leigh is of course the guy who played Bruce Lee in DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY, and if you’ve seen that you know he’s pretty phenomenal. The guy looks nothing like Bruce Lee, and he’s a totally different body type. But somehow in the fight scenes he scrunches his body up and he moves just right and at times he makes you think of him as really being Bruce Lee. I mean people are always talking about actors gaining weight or doing accents or whatever, but that was a case of a guy really going through an amazing physical transformation, and he seems to just do it with his movements. That’s a real underrated movie too, a good balance of corny romance and kung-fu action. Too bad the director turned into Rob Cohen.

Anyway, Mr. Leigh was perfect casting to play this generic, er, iconic type character of the asskicking priest. He really makes him cool. He’s got long hair and a long coat and when you see him in silhouette you assume he’s Dracula. But then you see his collar. He gets to do some martial arts, kill some vampires with a whip, carry around a couple severed heads. But his best scene is early on when he’s been nicked by a vampire so he takes his shirt off and goes out into the sunlight and screams in pain as the vampirism is apparently burned out of his body. He makes it agonizing.

Unfortunately, his character takes the backseat to the “plot” and mostly disappears until the end of the movie, when he swoops in to make the save and turn the movie vaguely interesting again.

By the way, if you don’t figure out the second you see Craig Sheffer in a wheelchair that he’s gonna get bit and start walking, then you might be able to enjoy this movie. sorry I gave it away to you though, whoops. Or who knows, maybe that won’t happen, nobody really knows.

One last thing about this movie. One of the ways they keep the guy who is apparently Dracula tied up for the whole movie is they put a net on top of him. Because vampires can get distracted by knots. I knew I had seen this obscure vampire detail in one other movie, so I was thinking it must’ve been DRACULA 2000 I. But looking at my old reviews it turned out to be HABIT, the most watchable of Larry Fessenden’s Pretentious Horror Trilogy. In my review of HABIT I included a random offhand comment:

“There’s also at least one obscure vampire detail, that she gets preoccupied by knots. I hope they bring that one back in DRACULA 2000 II.”

Well, I got my knots, but in order to get that I also had to get DRACULA II.

“Careful… what you weesh for…”

thanks boys

Vern

Originally published at Aint-It-Cool-News: http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=14486

[ratings]