The Curse of the Dragon (1993) Reviews

• A must see documentary

  Ozzy-131999-04-23

  This astonishing documentary, from the co-producer of Enter The Dragon, takes a fresh and incisive look at the life and mysterious death of martial-arts legend Bruce Lee. You'll see film clips and rare footage, hear interviews with his famous students, and hear remembrances from son Brandon Lee.

• Decent content, awful editing

  alanphan-837862019-02-02

  A relatively surface level documentary directed by Fred Weintraub that gives an overview about Bruce Lee's life career. With people like Kareem Abdul Jabar, Chuck Norris and James Coburn among others who knew Lee personally, this doco looked to have plenty of material to take an interesting and in-depth look into Lee's life or philosophy. Instead, it goes for a fairly shallow angle, giving a chronology of his life and scraping the surface of his development as a martial artist, as well as a few tales from the sets of his films. However, the true sin of this film is its horrendous editing. It constantly fades out from one interviewee (often in the middle of a sentence) and begins fading in the next before the first has finished. This renders some of what both are saying indiscernible as there will be an overlap of them talking. It also too quickly transitions between interviewees, often only having someone say a couple of lines before fading them out and feeling like the interviewees aren't really given the chance to say their piece. Even worse, there are sequences in which both of these flaws manifest, with an interviewee getting faded out mid-sentence, a second interviewee being faded in, only to be faded out (sometimes literally after a single line), and having a third interviewee be faded in. Its frustrating that this documentary clearly had access to people that knew Lee closely, yet doesn't let any of them say anything for more than a few seconds before rushing them out the door. There's also a somewhat tacked on 5-10 minutes at the end which mentions Brandon Lee's death and the alleged 'curse' on the family. While obviously relevant to Bruce, it seems awkward to suddenly shift focus onto Brandon's death despite his only prior mention being far earlier in the film and only to mention his birth. If they still had all of the interview material, they could probably recut a great film, but as far as this one goes, it's really nothing special.

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• Offers a more controversial view.

  alexanderdavies-993822018-08-09

  This documentary has opted to take a different approach in relating the Bruce Lee story. Various people who were interviewed for this tribute, seem to place a lot of emphasis upon the less positive aspects of the martial arts legend. Bruce Lee's lack of patience whilst teaching his students, his affair with Betty Ting Pei, an alleged encounter with a crime syndicate during the filming of "The Big Boss," his being open in criticising the traditional styles and having a tendency to brag and to showboat. Some of the above is best taken with a grain of salt. There are better documentaries out there.

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