My first Bruce Lee movie. That’s probably hard for some of you to believe, but there it is.
I’ll share some impressions and surprises from my experience watching the film.
1. The dubbing is as hilarious as the parodies make it out to be, which is funny because it’s actually an English language movie. They just had really terrible sound techs or something.
2. Bruce Lee was so fucking fast! I mean, I know that internationally he’s the most famous martial artist in history, but I still had no idea. There were scenes in the film where I thought they must have played with the film speed to make him look faster, but then they’d have a scene with people in the background to show that the film speed was normal. He really was that fast! Uncanny.
3. This film had so much humor, both of the intentional and unintentional variety. It was a perfect storm. I bet it would be a fun movie to watch high.
4. I knew Bruce Lee was an international film star, I knew he was a famous fight/martial arts choreographer, but I didn’t realize what sort of actor he was. Clearly this is tempered by the sort of film it was, this is a very particular genre that I can’t speak of in detail because my journey learning about it is just beginning. Still, this dude was the real deal. Just his facial expressions were enough to indicate that he was wildly intelligent. In a film where most of the dialogue was washed over because of the terrible dubbing, he was able to use eye rolls, random expressions, grins, and glares to make it quite clear to the audience that he was the smartest guy in the room and also a BAMF.
5. No other action star I’ve encountered approaches anything near the sheer animal magnetism of Lee’s personality. Even with all the dated aspects of the film, and there were many, he was still electric onscreen.
6. I’m excited for future Kung-Fu movies, if for no other reason than an excuse to have more exposure to Bruce Lee.
