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Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story

Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story

List Price: $14.98
Your Price: $11.98
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Very good movie, but not accurate.
Review: I have seen this movie a few times. Very entertaining, funny, and sometimes sad. The reason why it does not get five stars : Bruce Lee is portrayed to be too weak. I mean, this guy could take down Jackie Chan, Van Damme, Chuck Norris, and Bolo Yeang together in one shot!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Surprisingly good film with many DVD extras
Review: This is director Rob Cohen's feature debut (followed by Dragonheart and Daylight, the cable movie Rat Pack, and the unwatchable The Skulls), and it is easily his best. The film has heart and sparks a greater interest in Bruce Lee himself. Because of this film I have sought out some of Bruce Lee's films (Enter the Dragon is a great DVD with lots of extras). One thing I look for in DVDs is commentary, and this is one has excellent running commentary by the director, Cohen. It really enhances the film upon a second viewing and has some very interesting insights into the creative process that goes into dramatizing a biography. Overall a recommend. Universal Pictures I think has done the best job of all the studios in chocking their DVD releases full of extras. If only they made more great movies!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This is indeed not intended to be an accurate biopic!
Review: I'd have to agree with Philip Wright's review that "Dragon" was indeed not apparently intended to be an accurate, detailed and true-to-life account of Bruce Lee's story. The important thing, of course, is to bring out the overall "theme" of his life, so that valuable lessons and "points to ponder" would be brought out. For a number of us Asians, Lee stood for everything a lot of Easterners in his time aspired to be: someone who can go head-to-head and eye-to-eye with the best the West can offer, on equal terms, and emerge triumphant. Cliched and corny it may be, it is unquestionable that Lee was eventually immortalized in essence because of this. And this distinctive "power" obviously emanated from him and him alone (if it hadn't then we would have had a surge of Jeet Kune Do practicing box-office superstars, which we of course don't!).

On to the DVD itself - 5 stars because of quality and "value for money"; although it's worth more than the average DVD, it's also packed with tons of features: making of, Bruce Lee interview, Trailers, etc.. Plus a very interesting and informative audio commentary - for heaven's sake when will DVD manufacturers finally figure out that all DVDs which come out nowadays should have these features built in already as standard? Oh well...

This is an essential, not just for the multitudes of Bruce Lee Fans out there and for purchasers of "Enter The Dragon: 25th Anniversay Edition" and the "Bruce Lee Gift Pack", but to those just longing for an entertaining yarn with a healthy dose of romance, action, comedy and drama.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY.... sort of....
Review: DRAGON was a 1993 film about the life of legendary Bruce Lee. The movie was fun to watch, but had far too many low points.

First of all, it was quite entertaining. Hoky at times, but fun to watch. The location filming is good, and the movie is worth owning if, like me, you are an avid Bruce Lee fan.

The biggest problem with this film is that, dispite it's entertainment value, it was not true to life. It mixes up the events of his life, makes things up, and over-dramatizes pointless parts. It also often makes Lee look much weaker than he really was. Lee could finish off opponents in a short amount of time if he wanted to, but in DRAGON, he often takes much longer to do so (in fights that didn't even happen). He even comes close to losing in a lot of the fights!

Despite all the lows, the main back-story is correct, and the movie is great to watch. Seriously though, the best Bruce Lee biography you will find is the one that airs on TLC (a Canadian channel I believe). Unfortunately, I don't know it's title, but it was an excellent, touching biography.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Another great DVD reissue that does justice to the format.
Review: Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story takes liberties with the bio-film setup and succeeds in spades, resulting in something much more interesting and challenging than straight adaptations of a life.

Director Rob Cohen's sure hand with actors gives him an edge, surely, and his cast is wonderful -- Lauren Holly was in her late 20s at filming but plays her character as a teen deftly. Jason Scott Lee may not look much like Bruce Lee, but unless Brandon Lee were cast, that's an insurmountable limitation. What Jason Scott Lee creates is a Bruce Lee that's much more likeable, more of a boy next door, than the real Bruce Lee, and considering the romantic, mythical tone of the film in general, it was an apt choice. His athleticism and dedication make him come alive onscreen, and the moment when he explodes at Holly shows him as nuts as Bruce Lee was.

The most brilliant touch of this movie was in its appropriation of certain Bruce Lee film idioms. The single most true-to-fact sequence in Dragon, in fact, is the back-alley fight with the cooks. The music, staging, editing and character behaviour here are so much like Lee's films (with the exception of The Chinese Connection) that they emblematize Lee in a way that's purely cinematic. Randy Edelman's score for the whole film was excellent ; this is one reason why you'll very often hear the "Dragon" theme used in film trailers -- it is perhaps the most widely used trailer score throughout the '90s. But his work was especially fit in this sequence.

And the DVD edition? Consider this: Three pages worth of just selection screens for bonus materials; interviews with Linda Lee Cadwell, Jason Scott Lee and Lauren Holly (I wish there could've been more, though); Jason Scott Lee's screen test -- and not just standing there doing a monologue, but a fantastically staged and filmed fight sequence that could easily have been in a feature; outtakes of the Ed Parker fight sequence; storyboards; a Bruce Lee on-camera interview, photographs from Bruce Lee's life...the only misstep here was Linda Lee Cadwell's verbal commentary to lead off the film. Though quite charming on camera and approachable, she's unbelievably stiff when delivering a written speech, and I wish she had just improvised and *talked* instead of *presented* her thoughts on her husband's life.

Dragon is not true to life. The real-life Bruce Lee, though vivacious and ambitious, is not as likeable as the persona presented here. As the interview footage shows, Bruce Lee was an arrogant man, a man not afraid to proclaim his own greatness, with very little sense of gaucherie. And Dragon's ambiguous ending ("Bruce fell into a mysterious coma...") is probably because some reports placed Lee at a mistress' house at the time of his death, while others pointed to drug use and/or triad affiliations. But Cohen has made a conscious choice to make Dragon part of the myth, not the "truth", and his sensibility remains consistent and effective throughout the film.

Don't watch Dragon to get a real sense of Lee's real-life character. Instead. sit back and watch an earnest celebration, a film interested in proponing the Bruce Lee myth, and simply a good story about an interracial romance made more dynamic by means of action-film conventions.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I dont care if its true to his life, its still incredible!
Review: It may not hold true to Lee's life 100% but it does not matter. Based on his wife's book, and the newest of all Bruce Lee Biographies, Dragon: a Bruce Lee Story has drama, action, pain and joy as well as an inspirational storyline. A must see for anyone, even if you don't like Lee for whatever reason, you MUST watch this.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A life worth remembering
Review: Rob Cohen's DRAGON THE BRUCE LEE STORY is the best film that Bruce Lee never made. Though Cohen recounts the man's life in some kind of chronological order, he doesn't simply "tell it like it was", preferring instead to visualise Lee's major achievements in terms of his philosophy and beliefs. Therefore, alongside the development of Lee's martial arts techniques (demonstrated in a series of increasingly fluid fight sequences) and his relationship with his wife and children, Lee's inner demons are personified by way of a spectral Ming warrior who seems to intrude on his everyday reality, prior to claiming him forever in 1973 at the age of 32. Perhaps the film's major triumph is the fortuitous casting of Jason Scott Lee in the title role, giving the performance of a lifetime under what must have been hugely difficult circumstances, and he dominates a fine cast of supporting players, including newcomers Lauren Holly and Sterling Macer, and veterans Robert Wagner, Michael Learned and Nancy Kwan. Universal's region 1 DVD is a replica of their 'Signature Collection' laserdisc, and is probably the last word on this exceptional film. Presented in glorious Panavision widescreen (though not, alas, anamorphically - the disc's only real flaw), the images are solid and colorful, and Randy Edelman's evocative music score is well-served by the Dolby Digital soundtrack. There's a wealth of extras, too, including the obligatory (but very welcome!) trailers, production notes, star profiles, and an eye-opening director's commentary which manages to bridge the difficult gap between education and entertainment. The "Making of" documentary could have been longer and more detailed, I suppose, and it took me ages to figure out that the storyboards and photo-gallery sections could only be manipulated using the chapter-skip function on my remote control, but the disc is otherwise an essential purchase for anyone even remotely interested in the subject matter. All in all, a worthy tribute to the enduring legacy of a remarkable man.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: DRAGON
Review: It was like watching Bruce Lee himself, the only problem was it didn't say much about his childhood, and there is the fact that they made it like he got into a fight every day of his life, but it was still good.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Lee would be embarrased
Review: This movie was horrible. Bruce Lee didn't hurt his back in a fight,he hurt it while lifting weights. The fight scenes were like some of Jackie Chans fight scenes. This movie didn't show at all how the man really was and what really took place in his life.I couldn't wait for this movie to come out, and when I saw it it made me sick. Watch the A&E documentary or Bruce Lee The Curse of The Dragon to find out how he really lived and what he did for the martial arts.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Dragon
Review: This movie is about Bruce's life and go's into detail about his life. People who love his movies will be very pleased with this bio movie.


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