dragon the bruce lee story full movie youtube

Although it plays fast and loose with the facts, the 1993 Hollywood biopic Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story is an enjoyable watch.

Directed by Rob Cohen, an established mainstream filmmaker who was neither an action specialist nor particularly familiar with martial arts films, Dragon takes the spirit of Linda Lee Cadwell's 1989 update of her book Bruce Lee: The Man Only I Knew , and recasts Lee's story as a typical 1990s Hollywood romantic drama.

The Lee of Dragon , played by Chinese-Hawaiian actor Jason Scott Lee, is a cheerfully optimistic outsider who battles against the odds to establish himself in the United States with the unfaltering help of his loyal American wife (played by Lauren Holly).

The martial arts scenes, choreographed by Hongkonger John Cheung Ng-long, are edited in the choppier American style, but are still exciting. The film's unswerving depiction of racism, often shown in the treatment Lee receives from Cadwell's mother, Vivian Emery – who said the portrayal of her in the film was relatively accurate – is unusually brutal, and still relevant today.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/embed/MDKTBiHBmeI[/embed]

"When a Hollywood executive asked me if I had any interest in making a film about Bruce Lee , I told her that I didn't know anything about him, apart from Enter The Dragon ," director Cohen told the Post in an interview in 1992. "I asked her to give me the material on him, and she gave me Linda Lee's book about their life together. I was thunderstruck."

"Universal thinks we're making a kung fu film, but I look at it as what [Martin Scorsese's] Raging Bull is to boxing. I am not making a kung fu film, I am making a biography of a kung fu artist who is also one of the most complex, charismatic and interesting individuals that you could make a movie about," Cohen explained.

Like many late-20th century Hollywood biopics, Dragon takes the facts of Lee's life as a starting point and changes them to fit the demands of a commercial narrative. All of the right elements are there, but they take place at the wrong places at the wrong times, and are all heavily fictionalised.

The heart of the film is Bruce's relationship with Linda, and much of it focuses on their romantic life, and how she encouraged him, and helped him to achieve success.

To spice up the narrative, Cohen introduced a subplot that focused on the long-standing legend that the Lee family were cursed . Although it's not overplayed, Lee's subconscious mind battles with a demonic ancient Chinese soldier who is trying to kill him.

Jason Scott Lee in a publicity portrait for Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.

The idea of the family curse became prominent during the film's release in 1993, as Lee's son Brandon was tragically killed in an accident on the film set of The Crow while Dragon was awaiting release.

Although Cohen says he knew little about Lee's life and work before he started work on Dragon , he had attended the US premiere of Enter The Dragon in 1973, as a guest of the film's US producer Fred Weintraub. "I went, and I had no idea what I was seeing," he told the Post . "The audience looked like they had emptied out all the jails. It was the most street audience I had ever seen.

"This guy came on screen, this very handsome Chinese guy, who could do all this amazing stuff, and people were screaming and cheering like it was a sporting event. When the movie finished, I went up to Fred and said, 'This guy Bruce Lee, he's fantastic!' Weintraub got a strange look on his face and said to me, 'Yeah, he died three months ago'," said Cohen.

Cheung, who choreographed the martial arts scenes, had choreographed ninja films in Hong Kong. He also appears in the film, playing Johnny Tan, a fictionalised version of Wong Jack Man, who fought Lee because he insulted the Chinese martial arts establishment in the US by claiming that his style was superior to traditional styles.

Bruce Lee, his wife Linda Lee Cadwell, and children Brandon (lower left) and Shannon in the 1970s. Photo: courtesy of the Bruce

Jason Scott Lee is effective in the fights, although his broad fighting style did not remind anyone of Bruce Lee. Jason Scott Lee had no experience in martial arts before Dragon , aside from a few karate lessons as a child, and was trained from scratch in jeet kune do, the martial art Bruce Lee created , by one of the latter's former students, Jerry Poteet.

"I was reluctant to do the movie, because, at the time, I wasn't in the kind of shape you see me in now," Jason Scott Lee said in an interview for the film's release.

His rounded, toned physique does not resemble that of Bruce Lee, who was slim and light, although the look was close enough for Poteet. "Every once in a while, I look, and it's as if I'm standing in the room with Bruce again. It's kind of strange at times," Poteet said.

Cohen had his own rationale for the action sequences, he told the Post , although his analysis of Bruce Lee's performances misses the mark.

"Bruce's fighting style, and the fighting style of the kung fu films of the early 1970s, is completely different from the fighting styles of the post-Jackie Chan era, where things have sped up considerably," he said.

"Bruce did not fight with the same speed on film as Jackie Chan and his school has done. So I said I wanted to take the film to the kind of level where Bruce might have gone if he had lived, but still be true to the essence of the Bruce Lee fighting style."

Brandon Lee was initially approached to play his father in Dragon, but said in an interview at the time that he turned it down, as he was trying to establish himself as an actor on his own terms. "If it had come along later in my career, I might have seriously considered it. But as it is, I just feel like it could have been a career-ender," he said.

Brandon Lee's death on the set of The Crow in early 1993 did not delay the release of Dragon , which features a disturbingly prescient scene of Bruce trying to protect his son from the demonic supernatural soldier.

Cohen did ask Cadwell if she wanted to delay the release, but she said it should go ahead as planned. Lee's widow attended the inauguration of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Bruce before Dragon 's celebrity premiere in Los Angeles in April 1993, and gave a speech in which she said that the gathering should celebrate his life.