Birth of the Dragon is not the Bruce Lee biopic you’ve been waiting for. With effective performances and martial arts action of Philip Ng and Xia Yu there is only so much that a viewer can do with a film that does not believe in the power of the real story. Much later, in 1965, two martial arts legends, Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man, wrestled privately from the audience. No one agreed what the fight’s conclusions would be. The Birth of the Dragon of director George Nolfi is heavily inspired by this history too massively events which loom. power. But the picture itself is being promoted in a fashion that is contrary to the how the finished product ended up. Looking at the posters of Philip Ng as Lee, there is a strong feeling one is looking at a typical Bruce Lee biopic. That’s not what this is, and the movie makes Lee a tertiary player in the narrative.
The bright side is that Xia Yu is quite remarkable in the role of Wong Jack Man, this Shaolin monk in search of himself who comes to the US for some peace. Unlike Lee, Man shows some radiance and capacity for self-examination albeit earns affection almost immediately. The indignity and the fight with Lee come to him as a last resort, and it isn’t a mere ambition of his to vanquish his one more foe. In this movie, however, beneath the surface and within the external aspects of the action, Man is struggling for Lee’s soul and for the very essence of the martial art.
Pleasing was the fact that the script permitted Lee to act like a dick in haughty contempt for Man while having inner fears that besting his adversary could depress Lee’s soaring drive. The tension between Man and Lee was such that one would feel sorry for the movie because it manages to mess it up in so many ways. For instance, as a biopic of Lee, Lee’s character is not well developed and makes sparsely any attempts to cast the role of Lee’s wife, cadwell who was very important to Lee, and one of the few people who saw the fight between Man and Lee.
Had there been a grand sequence built in order to lead to a climatic duel, followed by the duel itself and its consequences, this could have been something really remarkable. Instead, both Lee and Man get shoved aside too often for the likes of Billy Magnussen’s Steve McKee, who is also a student of Lee and takes a fancy to Man as soon as he gets there. In point of fact, the film is unlike this: there was no Steve McKee, and this character completely threw off the balance of the rest of the film. McKee’s world is a range of kung fu movies where young leading fella meets a girl, touches her heart only to depart for the underworld and come back to rescue her in the process.
This narration leaves a similar negative impression on Lee and Man’s personality since the viewer views them through the perspective of McKee. Almost all the action or events can be connected to McKee, and it is rather nonsensical. His role is purely there to facilitate the casting of a Caucasian in the film. Magnussen does what he can, but that is poor trash that even the movie business should be fickle with nowadays. This will keep McKee’s inclusion from permitting the Birth of the Dragon from making a breakthrough out of a box office curse, instead, McKee’s inclusion will guarantee that Birth of the Dragon’s remain in theaters will be a brief affair.
Undoubtedly, Ng and Yu also contribute to the effectiveness of the film, and the film does not let the audience down, by the time it gets to showing the epic duel. There were some instances when Nolfi appeared to be taking a step back from the martial arts action and indulging in some camera tricks instead. But by and large, this was the best part of this movie. However, that was far from being the end as the third act adopts an absurdity of plot that is meant for a 70s rendition. There are some moments especially towards the very end where some of the final fights are actually enjoyable to look at but they are also the moments that signify where the narrative totally departs from the realm of rationality. At this point however, headache does not come from the bald man’s plan, his cannot be fitted in kindly, in other words McKee’s reasons for action, but rather from his absence of action. It would be as well to classify Bigomekoma and Mavor the same way.
Should this be regarded as the silver lining to the storm clouds that right abundant, even hope, for most of Birth of the Dragon, it would be if this film makes it possible for Ng and Yu to be bigger movie stars in America. These men deserve a better interesting histel.
The Verdict After watching Birth of the Dragons, the author has always held that the filmmakers never had the confidence in their picture to go all the way and make it a picture about Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man. It is unfathomable why the filmmakers chose to let McKee usurp the center of attention as it compromised the movie as a whole which already had two well-cast leads in Ng and Yu. The ending of the film emphasized on production values that surpassed the kung fu films of the ‘70s that it borrowed from. However, it is a story that had its heart ripped out.
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