PG-13 | 2 hrs | Drama, Biopic | May 7, 1993
The year 2023 marks the 50th death anniversary of San Francisco-born martial artist and actor Bruce Lee. It also marks the 50th anniversary of “Enter the Dragon” that catapulted Bruce to global fame, and the 30th anniversary of screenwriter-director Rob Cohen’s “Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.”
In the film, Bruce’s parents send him back to America, hoping that studying will distract him from the scuffling he can’t seem to resist in Hong Kong. They'd moved to Hong Kong after his birth, and it’s where he was raised as a boy. Teaching, he refines his learning of martial arts. Marrying a white woman, Linda (Lauren Holly), he finds strength in combating racism. Manager Bill Krieger (Robert Wagner), spotting Bruce’s grasp of the theatrical, introduces him to showbiz. Bruce’s magnetism does the rest.
Familiar to Asian traditions, the Demon is like the gargoyle in Western traditions: a fearsome-looking sculpture guarding sacred sites, not to embody evil (selfishness, pride, fear, envy, greed) but to scare it away. Yet for all of its fearsomeness, here it embodies Bruce’s subconscious, raging behind (and beneath) his conscious insecurities.
Bruce Lee fans favor the climactic room-of-mirrors sequence in “Enter the Dragon” as the summit of screen spectacle; for sheer drama, it’s hard to beat. Still, Mr. Cohen portrays it as Bruce’s battle with himself, his fears, his ego, and his struggle to find fulfillment apart from his ambitions and attachments.
Bruce died a month before “Enter the Dragon” was released. Eerily, Mr. Cohen’s script has Bruce fending the Demon off his son Brandon; the real-life Brandon died weeks before Mr. Cohen’s film released.
Battling the Ego
Martial artists are rarely considered athletes the way sprinters or marathoners are, implying more art and artistry than athleticism. And art, or striving toward it, pervades Bruce’s life: the art of staying a student while teaching, the art of rising after each fall, the art of building balance while embracing extremes, and the art of enduring punishing training routines as preconditions for his envied ease during heated combat.In a film about fighting, Mr. Cohen, supported by Randy Edelman’s heroic score, spends considerable time contemplating reconciliation. Bruce reconciles with sudden riches and a soaring reputation; he reconciles with Linda’s formerly racist family, with setbacks from grievous injury, with rejections by major film studios, and with reversals from a near-fatal injury.
The Actors
Fittingly, it’s Jason’s humility that won him the part. Mr. Cohen knew that Chinese actors would jump at the role, hard selling their nationality, physique, and martial arts prowess. But Jason, having seen several actors play Bruce poorly, and wary of mocking Bruce’s memory by compounding that farce, said, “I think you’ve got the wrong guy." Instantly, Mr. Cohen knew that Jason would be perfect, and in the film, he is.Bruce’s martial arts student Jerry Poteet, coaching Jason, told him something that Bruce was fond of saying: “To see is to be deceived, to hear is to be lied to, but to feel is to believe.”
Jason’s disarming smile compensates for the fact that he doesn’t resemble Bruce as much as actors who’ve played Bruce before him. Instead, he captures, as no one does, Bruce’s indomitable spirit, his effervescence, and his “Chi.”
Linda, as a voice-over at the end, poignantly salutes Bruce’s elusive qualities when she says that although many speculate about how Bruce died, she prefers to remember how he lived. After all, isn’t that what matters?
