It seems that Director George Nolfi had to do a bit of juggling with the narrative to this movie, because it appears that there are three main protagonists here. There's Wong Jack Man, who is a Shaolin Kung Fu Master looking for penance. There's Bruce Lee, the brash but skillful Wing Chun expert with ambitions of stardom. Then there's Steve McKee, the martial arts student who finds himself as an intermediary between the two. Yu Xia as Wong Jack Man is great in the role, Philip Ng is impressively fantastic as Bruce Lee, but unfortunately Billy Magnussen really does come off as just the "token" white American in this story.
As a film, this one seems to be an homage to the 1970-1980s B-Movie American made classics of martial arts flicks, that tried to capitalize on the growing popularity of Kung Fu in the West. The plot involving Steve McKee and a woman trapped under a debt to a Chinese Mob certainly fits the bill as a typical story trope found in those Kung Fu flicks. That's the least interesting thing about this movie of course, because this is after all a fictionalized story that is inspired by the true but controversial 1964 fight between Wong Jack Man and Bruce Lee. I suppose this could also be an homage to those "Bruceploitation" movies that showed up after his death.
That whole derivative story involving the McKee character which acts as the through-line that triggers the fight between the two martial arts legends, is to put it mildly, unfortunate. However, if you don't mind Mckee's hokey and uninspired story line being in this movie, you should be able to appreciate the plot involving Wong Jack Man and Bruce Lee anyway. Truly, the reason to see this movie are for those two legends. The fight scenes were also pretty good, and very entertaining to watch. I also liked a lot of the creative slow-mo sequences within the action; especially the point of view shots.
It's easy to dismiss this movie as a blasphemous depiction of Bruce Lee's history, but I really think Philip Ng deserves a lot of praise for this, as well as Yu Xia. I also have to say that I appreciated the fact that just about every role in this movie is played by an Asian, with the token white boy character of McKee being the only exception. So as much as I can complain about certain things about this movie, it does still feed into that simple entertainment value as a fun enough Kung Fu flick to check out.
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