Product Description

Portrays the life and rise of the martial arts star Bruce Lee.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 26-DEC-2005
Media Type: DVD

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12406 in DVD
• Brand: Universal Studios
• Released on: 1998-07-01
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 120 minutes

Amazon.com
This enjoyable and touching biography of martial-arts film star Bruce Lee stars Jason Scott Lee (no relation), an actor with a lively face and natural intensity, who makes every moment of this film compelling. Directed by Rob Cohen, Dragon traces Bruce Lee's slow rise over myriad obstacles--most of them race-based--to become an international superstar in films. Lee's origins are oddly set in San Francisco instead of his real home in Seattle, but then again there is plenty of artistic license going on as Cohen explores the actor's psyche through some powerful fantasy sequences. Lauren Holly is good as Lee's wife, Linda (whose book about her late husband inspired this movie). A scene involving Bruce's rescue of son Brandon (who died in a filmmaking accident in 1993) from a murderous spirit is plain spooky. The special-edition DVD release has a widescreen presentation, director interview, featurette, screen tests, closed captioning, optional French soundtrack, and optional Spanish subtitles. --Tom Keogh

From The New Yorker
Bruce Lee, a kung-fu master and star of the 1973 martial-arts extravaganza "Enter the Dragon," had the sort of physical skills that even the most gifted mimic couldn't do justice to. In Rob Cohen's biographical film, Jason Scott Lee (no relation) plays Bruce, and he does well enough in the picture's many spectacular fight scenes, yet the violent production numbers don't quite capture the excitement-the aesthetic thrill-of a performance by the real Bruce Lee. Even more damagingly, the movie doesn't answer, or even formulate, the most interesting questions about its subject's odd life and unlikely career. The filmmakers are evasive about the circumstances of Lee's sudden death, in 1973, at the age of thirty-two; and they never try to explain why this phenomenally talented artist chose to express himself through combat. They present Bruce, for the most part, as a sweet, even-tempered young man-just another optimistic kid chASINg a dream of success. This is a speedy and fairly absorbing picture, but we're always aware that something is missing. Also with Lauren Holly, Michael Learned, Robert Wagner, and John Cheung (who staged the fight scenes). The screenplay, by Cohen, Edward Khmara, and John Raffo, is based on a memoir by Lee's widow. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Inspiring
"Dragon" is an epic depicting the life of Bruce Lee. In my opinion, it is one of the most entertaining biopics of recent times. It follows the life of Bruce Lee from his childhood in Hong Kong to right before his death. The DVD version is particularly interesting because it comes with a few interviews that really shed light on Bruce Lee the man. This movie doesn't just focus on his martial arts, but it also shows his life as a family man, and an American. I found his struggle against racism to be the most moving point in this movie. Prior to Bruce Lee, the roles of Asians in Hollywood were restricted to laundrymen, villians, and caricatures. Through his effort and self-confidence, Bruce was able to make Asians into Hollywood heros. Suddenly Asia was cool.

Jason Scott Lee does a great job of portraying Bruce Lee and it's a shame that we can't see more of him these days. You can really feel the power of his performance on the screen. If you have any interest in Bruce Lee, you have to check out this film. It's sure to inspire you to reach for your own impossible dreams.

The Legendary Bruce Lee
This is a great film of the legend of Bruce Lee. It's not an acurate portrayal of his life, but it's still a great movie. The fights scenes in the movie were awesome. Jason Scott Lee does a great job imitating Bruce's style and mannerisms. It also accurately showed us the racism involved at the time directed at the Chinese. Although Bruce Lee was a great man with great ambitions and accomplishments, he wasn't as friendly as the film depicts him to be. At times Bruce Lee was a bit arrogant and very strong minded and the movie fails to show us that, except when he seemingly temporarily loses his mind argueing with Linda Lee played by Lauren Holly. Anyway, I love this movie and I love the legend of Bruce Lee, so I reccommend this to any one interested in action movies, Bruce Lee, and inspirational movies. If you love this film I also recommend movies like "Fist of Fury", "The Chinese Connection", "Return of The Dragon", "Enter The Dragon", and "Rapid Fire". If you want to know more about the real Bruce Lee, I reccomend "The Curse Of the Dragon", it has pictures, interviews with people who knew Bruce Lee, a special but short interview with Brandon Lee, and film excerpts.

Another great DVD reissue that does justice to the format.
Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story takes liberties with the bio-film setup and succeeds in spades, resulting in something much more interesting and challenging than straight adaptations of a life.

Director Rob Cohen's sure hand with actors gives him an edge, surely, and his cast is wonderful -- Lauren Holly was in her late 20s at filming but plays her character as a teen deftly. Jason Scott Lee may not look much like Bruce Lee, but unless Brandon Lee were cast, that's an insurmountable limitation. What Jason Scott Lee creates is a Bruce Lee that's much more likeable, more of a boy next door, than the real Bruce Lee, and considering the romantic, mythical tone of the film in general, it was an apt choice. His athleticism and dedication make him come alive onscreen, and the moment when he explodes at Holly shows him as nuts as Bruce Lee was.

The most brilliant touch of this movie was in its appropriation of certain Bruce Lee film idioms. The single most true-to-fact sequence in Dragon, in fact, is the back-alley fight with the cooks. The music, staging, editing and character behaviour here are so much like Lee's films (with the exception of The Chinese Connection) that they emblematize Lee in a way that's purely cinematic. Randy Edelman's score for the whole film was excellent ; this is one reason why you'll very often hear the "Dragon" theme used in film trailers -- it is perhaps the most widely used trailer score throughout the '90s. But his work was especially fit in this sequence.

And the DVD edition? Consider this: Three pages worth of just selection screens for bonus materials; interviews with Linda Lee Cadwell, Jason Scott Lee and Lauren Holly (I wish there could've been more, though); Jason Scott Lee's screen test -- and not just standing there doing a monologue, but a fantastically staged and filmed fight sequence that could easily have been in a feature; outtakes of the Ed Parker fight sequence; storyboards; a Bruce Lee on-camera interview, photographs from Bruce Lee's life...the only misstep here was Linda Lee Cadwell's verbal commentary to lead off the film. Though quite charming on camera and approachable, she's unbelievably stiff when delivering a written speech, and I wish she had just improvised and *talked* instead of *presented* her thoughts on her husband's life.

Dragon is not true to life. The real-life Bruce Lee, though vivacious and ambitious, is not as likeable as the persona presented here. As the interview footage shows, Bruce Lee was an arrogant man, a man not afraid to proclaim his own greatness, with very little sense of gaucherie. And Dragon's ambiguous ending ("Bruce fell into a mysterious coma...") is probably because some reports placed Lee at a mistress' house at the time of his death, while others pointed to drug use and/or triad affiliations. But Cohen has made a conscious choice to make Dragon part of the myth, not the "truth", and his sensibility remains consistent and effective throughout the film.

Don't watch Dragon to get a real sense of Lee's real-life character. Instead. sit back and watch an earnest celebration, a film interested in proponing the Bruce Lee myth, and simply a good story about an interracial romance made more dynamic by means of action-film conventions.