Review No.154: I Am Bruce Lee

At the moment one of the trends in documentary film-making seems to be that of producing biographies of famous men who left us too soon with last year's award-winning Senna setting the way while Kevin McDonald's Marley has also received plenty of critical praise this year. Looking to follow this success is Kevin McCormack, who directed a 2009 film about Muhammad Ali told from the perspective of his opponents, by bringing us I Am Bruce Lee which tells the story of the small lad from Hong Kong who went onto be one of the most famous martial artists of all time. I Am Bruce Lee starts by showing Bruce's funeral before back-tracking to tell of us his childhood where we learnt, something that I wasn't aware of, that he was a big child star in his native Hong Kong with one of the talking heads describing him as the Macauly Culkin of his day. It then went on to see him journey over to America where he met his future wife when he was a teacher and then finally his big break as Kato on The Green Hornet with everybody questioned saying that they watched the programme for him rather than for the titular hero. After the show finished Lee became a martial arts teacher to several big Hollywood stars including James Garner, James Coburn and Steve McQueen all of whom wanted to toughen up. Lee's massive career break came when he went back to Hong Kong and restarted his acting career which finished with Enter the Dragon but sadly he died just after filming it a death that to this day is still unexplained. Though McCormack does cover his acting career the majority of I Am Bruce Lee focuses on his fighting style and how the elders didn't want to teach Lee as he wasn't of pure Chinese blood as he was one quarter German. The middle section of the film also looks at how Lee's style influenced the now highly popular MMA fighting and this is confirmed by UFC president Dana White as well as some high profile fighters from the organisation including Haywire star Gina Carano who is able to comment on moving from fighting to acting. The tone of the film then is much about Lee's influence as it is a biography of his life and in that way I found it a little unsettling.

I feel the reason that Senna and Marley both worked so well was that they put their main focus on what their subjects were famous for as we saw plenty of race footage in the former while the latter was packed with Bob's back catalogue. In the case of I Am Bruce Lee the majority of the public know him primarily as an actor and for me it is those bits of the film that focus on his early career, his time on The Green Hornet and his rise to super-stardom that are the most interesting. The part of the film that lost me was the middle section which seemed to be as much of an advert for Dana White's UFC organisation than it did to be about Lee's fighting style. I am aware of MMA and also don't have a problem with McCormack providing a link between the two however I feel it is the part of the documentary that loses focus. The MMA fighters are also possibly some of the less interesting talking heads while Lee's family, in particular his wife, are able to provide insight into his life. It is the more famous faces though that a lot of people will watch this for in particular the actors who also have a fighting background and while Mickey Rourke was an obvious choice somebody who I didn't know had a fighting background was Modern Family actor Ed O'Neill maybe because his most famous role was as a hen-pecked husband on Married with Children. The prize for oddest talking head though is Black Eyed Peas member Taboo who talks about how Lee's footwork influenced him and in particular Bruce's background as a Cha Cha Dancer as one of the things I learned was that he was actually the Hong Kong Cha Cha champion of 1957. Though the talking heads add insight it is the archive footage of Bruce that provide the most compelling moments of the film namely a 1964 screen test as well as an interview in which Lee talks about his famous martial arts pupils. I feel it a little harsh to compare I Am Bruce Lee to Senna or Marley as they both had blatantly higher production budgets than this film did however McCormack makes the most of his lot by combining interesting talking heads with some fascinating archive footage. The big problem with the film is the reliance on UFC footage to bulk it out as I feel that's where it loses its way a bit but luckily the final 20 or so minutes brings it back to focus on Lee the actor something that I'm a lot more interested in.

Verdict: Fight fans will probably enjoy this more than film fans however there's enough to satisfy both because while I didn't enjoy the blatant UFC adverts there were enough revelations about Lee to keep me interested throughout so for that reason I will award it 7/10