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How Bruce Lee Changed the World
2009; directed by Steve Webb

Despite coming from the History Channel, How Bruce Lee Changed the World is less of a documentary about Bruce Lee, and more of a tribute to the man. In that sense, it works very well. While it won't provide any new information to die-hard Lee fans, seeing how he influenced several aspects of modern pop culture actually turns out to be pretty interesting, and makes this one of the better pictures produced about The Dragon.

The production starts out with a short biographical segment about Lee, which unfortunately falls a bit short because it gets facts about his life wrong. Most notably, it states that Lee only appeared in four films before his death, totally ignoring the movies Lee appeared in before his move from Hong Kong to America as a teenager. Factual errors like that are surprising, especially considering that Lee's daughter Shannon was a producer on this production, and threaten to give this picture the low-budget flavor of bottom of the barrel Lee pseudo-documentaries like Fist of Fear Touch of Death.

Thankfully, things do rebound with the rest of the running time, which consists of segments of how Lee has affected many different segments of society since his death, both through his martial arts and philosophy. There are some, like action film-making, that could be expected, but there are others which the viewer might not realize at first, and that is probably this picture's greatest strength. Seeing things like how modern UFC fighters use techniques that Lee came up with over thirty-five years ago is definitely interesting and makes the viewing worthwhile.

Even if some of the interview subjects (like Eddie Griffin) only have a tenuous connection to Lee and his influence, there's plenty of other good stuff here, including things like a rare interview with Golden Harvest executive Raymond Chow. Some of the chuff and flubs present here might give long-time Bruce Lee fans a headache. Do we really need to see Brett Ratner? What the hell makes him an expert on Bruce Lee exactly? But the good ultimately overcomes the bad here, and How Bruce Lee Changed the World ends up being a worthy (if a bit glorified) portrait of the biggest martial arts star ever that both veterans and newbies alike should be able to enjoy.

RATING: 7

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