Review of Birth of the Dragon (2017) by Stephen P — 23 Aug 2017

So basically the studio realized they couldn't cast Bruce Lee as a White guy, so instead they made a movie with a generic plot about a White guy who wants to bang a Chinese Girl who is owned by a very forgiving Chinese mob, and made a fight between two genuine kung fu legends the B story.

Its extra disappointing because the actor who played Lee did a great job of capturing his mannerisms and cockiness. The trailers would lead one to believe that this story focuses on Lee and or Wong Jack Man's preparation for a historic clash and how their lives are being affected, but that is really just a couple of scenes of exposition while generic White guy goes between the two attempting to either get them to solve his problems or trying to more less turn his back on Bruce Lee by getting Wong Jack to train him instead.

The supposed plot thread about Wong Jack being sent to punish Lee for teaching Kung Fu to whites is dropped for basically no reason. Basically the trailer for this movie is completely false and has very little to do with the movie as a whole.

If you just want to go watch this for the fight scenes then I'll say that most of them are pretty entertaining, except for the actual fight between Lee and Wong Jack. That fight sees random magical bullshit, that Bruce Lee probably wouldn't allow in one of his movies, get introduced for this fight only.

The camera angels are different for parts seemingly randomly, they develop low key super chi powers that lets them to jump from heights and fall in slow motion, they display what I guess is semi precognition that allows them to see all the possible ways their opponent can move, and they literally teleport at one point.

I'm not even speaking in hyperbole. At one point a group of like 12 people are watching the fight and the camera focuses on the White guy (because he is the central figure of Birth of the Dragon) and then the fighters appear on the opposite side of the building and everyone's heads snap to watch them.

This may not have been so bad if all of the fights had been structured similarly, but since it just happened this one time it felt very random and jarring. If you want to see this movie because you are a fan of Bruce Lee you should pass, but if you just want a movie with some kind of cool kung fu scenes then.

..I mean there are better choices on Netflix, but this is fine I guess.