Birth of the Dragon, 2016.
Directed by George Nolfi.
Starring Philip Ng, Billy Magnussen, Yu Xia, Wang Xi’An, Steven Roberts, Simon Yin, and Xing Jin.
SYNOPSIS:
A fictionalised account of the legendary fight between Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man in 1964.
The film is called Birth of the Dragon and you already know it is about Bruce Lee but this is not a biopic. Instead, Birth of the Dragon is a fictionalised account of a fight that took place in San Francisco in 1964 between Lee and Shaolin monk Wong Jack Man, an encounter that apparently inspired Bruce to rethink his limiting Wing Chun fighting style and invent his Jeet Kune Do technique.
Could have happened that way, and probably did to some degree, but this is entertainment and the makers of Birth of the Dragon are looking for a narrative, an angle to make the movie more than a documentary-style account of an event that has been told and retold by so many sources over the past six decades that the real truth has been buried by embellishment and the whole Bruce Lee legend. In this case the story does not centre on Bruce Lee or Wong Jack Man but on Steve McKee (Billy Magnussen – Into the Woods), a fictional character who is caught between the teachings of the aggressive and arrogant Lee and the more serene wisdom of Wong Jack Man, a Shaolin monk visiting the US to observe how kung fu has infiltrated the west. It has been said that Wong Jack Man came to America with the intention of stopping Lee teaching kung fu to westerners on the orders of the sensei from the east, and this is touched upon in the movie, but the monk denied there was ever any plan to shut Lee down. However, what happens in this story is Steve McKee gets frustrated with Lee’s showmanship and his apparent desire to seen as a star, appearing in movies and TV shows and not really following the spiritual philosophies of martial arts, and so he turns to Wong Jack Man to teach him a different way of combat, leading to Lee challenging Wong to a fight during a demonstration (which did happen).
So far, so true(ish) to life but there is a subplot about Steve McKee wanting to free a Chinese slave girl from the clutches of deadly crime boss Auntie Blossom (Xing Jin) and events transpire that Blossom will only free her if Bruce Lee (Philip Ng – Zombie Fight Club) and Wong Jack Man (Yu Xia – In the Heat of the Sun) fight, causing a lot of money to change hands between the local gangsters. The two master fighters do meet, they do fight and then things get really weird.
Up to and including the fight, Birth of the Dragon does stay fairly faithful to recorded events, with the obvious exception of Steve McKee and his character arc but in filmmaking terms McKee is being used as the eyes of the audience to see inside the world of the two fighters. The trouble is, and without revealing too much, once the fight is over the film seems to turn into an action movie and not just any old action movie but one in a similar vein to Bruce Lee’s own Green Hornet TV show, i.e. cheesy and only missing a few ‘POW’ and ‘BAM’ graphics to really hammer home the camp. Even if you’re on board with the filmmakers playing fast and loose with historical facts, and even trying to make Bruce Lee out to be ‘the bad guy’, this sudden tonal shift is too jarring and totally destroys any sense of intrigue about the real event or the people involved that had been adhered to beforehand. And as for the resolution with the crime lords, they may as well have made it a dream sequence given the cop-out we end up with.
The defence of all this is that Birth of the Dragon is not a biopic and simply uses a real-life event to build a fictional story around, and actor Philip Ng addresses this in the interview tagged onto the disc as the only special feature. You could view the film like that and if you do then Birth of the Dragon is a well shot martial arts movie featuring some brilliant fighting moves, decent performances from Philip Ng (whose own teacher was a student alongside Bruce Lee) and Yu Xia, and breezes by fairly unobtrusively. However, despite the wishes of the filmmakers to not take this too seriously with regards to being factual, Birth of the Dragon is selling itself on being about Bruce Lee – a cultural phenomenon whose impact is still being felt today – and an important turning point in his life and career but rather than focus on Lee it focuses far too much on the bland Steve McKee and an unnecessary plot thread that results in a dumb ending. Yes, the film takes liberties with things like fashion – you never really feel like you are in the sixties – and dialogue (‘chopsocky’ wasn’t even a phrase in 1964 but it gets used flippantly by one character), and events in Lee’s US acting career, which didn’t off until at least two years after this film is set yet he is shown here filming on the streets of San Francisco, but had the movie not descended into laughable territory those details could be forgiven in favour of telling a good story. Birth of the Dragon misses the opportunity to tell a good story and instead goes in a strange direction where Bruce Lee is basically the villain and barely appears in the first half of the film, Wong Jack Man is on a soul searching mission that could have had some deep repercussions but never really does, and a fictional character falls in love with another fictional character and is prepared to die for her in a storyline nobody is coming to this film for. For a biopic of Bruce Lee then 1993s Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story is still the one to turn to, and although factual details in that movie are also questionable it isn’t shy about putting its subject front and centre which, bizarrely, this movie is.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★/ Movie: ★★
Chris Ward
