I’ve always been a really big Bruce Lee fan. Don’t ask me why, I’m not entirely sure but I think it officially started after watching The Crow which starred his son Brandon Lee who fell victim to a freakish accident on the set of that movie and died. I was a sophmore in high school at the time, and within a few months of watching that film I had read every article I could find on Brandon and Bruce (I had quite the collection of Black Belt magazines), bought every movie with them in it, read Bruce’s offically biography twice and the book Bruce Lee wrote Tao of Jeet Kun do, visited his grave at Lakeview Cemetary in Seattle (Mitch was going to college in Bellingham at the time. Him and his friend Dan took an unofficialy leave of absence from class just to drive me down there…thanks guys :-), and started taking JKD lessons from one of but handful of JKD instructors who just happened to live here in Bartlesville (The classes were short lived. Tennis season started so I had to quit and the instructor was nice enough to send me along with a video on how to punch because, well…I punched like a girl). Yeah. So. I was kinda obsessed.
Anyway, Justin Lin, the guy who made the third Fast and Furious movie (or is it the fourth…I’ve lost count) has decided to make a spoof based on the making of Game of Death, the last movie Bruce Lee made. Left incomplete at the time of his death, Game of Death was supposed to be his greatest work, written and directed by Bruce himself. It was unique in comparison to his other stuff in that it wasn’t just a movie about Bruce Lee kicking everybody’s ass, but a movie about WHY Bruce Lee was able to kick everybody’s ass (see philosophy of JKD). Unfortunatley, in the middle of making the film he was asked to star in Enter the Dragon, which would eventually be his claim to fame, and shortly after that he died. It was partly because of this fame that they decided to complete Game of Death using a bunch of different Lee look-a-likes, which subsequently spawned hundreds of other Bruce “Lee” movies, a period in film history now refered to as the “Bruceploitation” tradition. It’s this idea that Lin is trying spoof:
The film’s gist? A fictional, behind-the-scenes look at the auditions for Game of Death. With Finishing the Game, Lin — who self-financed the film — handles the notion of Bruceploitation the way Quentin Tarantino pays tribute to blaxploitation in his 1997 cult favorite, Jackie Brown.
Finishing the Game pokes fun at the entertainment industry’s relentless efforts to hold onto something great that, in reality, is gone forever. In a closing scene, Lin shows a casting director presenting the final candidates. There’s a white guy, a guy in a wheelchair and a guy over 6 feet tall — it’s all pretty absurd.
What’s interesting is how the making of this movie seems to be leading to the same “Bruceploitation” that Lin is making so much fun of:
Finishing the Game also leads what looks to be the next wave of Bruceploitation: A Chicago theater company is working with David Bowie and Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang on a Bruce Lee musical, and director Rob Cohen has been pushing to make a movie that features the real Bruce Lee in CG. (Don’t hold your breath for this last one: The Lee family says they’ll never back it.)
Well, that’s a relief! Next thing you know we’ll have a Bruce Lee themed park complete with killer robots. Oh, wait, the Chinese are already doing that.
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