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The Life of Bruce Lee
One of the first Bruce Lee biographies made for North American audiences -- at least outside of the "Bruceploitation" realm -- this 1993 made for television entry suffers a bit from a low-budget production and doesn't offer any new information about the Little Dragon, but is still an interesting watch for fans of his work. Concentrating heavily on Lee's early days in America, much of the running time is devoted to interviews with his students, including James Coburn. Much of what the students have to say has been put out before, and one gets a bit of a sense that this portion of Lee's life has been (pardon the term) white-washed, giving no information towards elements like traditonal Chinese martial arts schools threatening Lee for teaching non-Asians kung fu. There's also very little, if any, attention given to the philosophy behind Lee's style Jeet Kune Do, which is oftentimes as interesting as the results Lee showcased in his films.
Martial Arts Master is also not very polished technically. Of course, in this day and age of high-definition video, we as audiences may be getting spoiled, in that even low-budget productions can now have a nice sheen to them, but the grainy footage containe herin just doesn't look all that good, especially when combined with graphic aftereffects that look like they were churned out by the local public-access cable studio. Despite its' problems, it would still take a whole lot of wrong to get most people (this reviewer included) to hate a Bruce Lee biography, and Martial Arts Master does enough things right that it's still worth checking out. In particular, kudos go out to the producers for actually getting the clearance to use footage from all of Lee's major movies, including Enter the Dragon -- something that film-makers armed with more cash have been apparently unable to do. RATING: 5 |
