Feb 22, 2013

Brucesploitation flick review: Image of Bruce Lee - 1978



Image of Bruce Lee
Director: Chuan Yang
1978
Action

Some counterfeiters are about to expand their market. But not all are pleased with the deal. Soon there’s internal fighting within the gang(s) and of course with the police that wants to stop all of the crime lords business in Hong Kong. All of the above are highly trained in the art of Kung-Fu…

I don’t really know what to make of this. It’s obvious that they tried to cash in on Bruce Lee’s name when they made it but it's a big fish to swallow. This is so bad that Bruce Lee never would have been interested in appearing in it anyway. The only connection with his is in the title really …and there’s someone who think a cabdriver looks a little bit like Bruce Lee. There you have it! There isn’t even an attempt to edit in some genuine fight scenes which could have saved the movie to be honest.

This release is about as good as an old VHS quality wise. I can live with that but I want some charisma to make it interesting. Perhaps it would have been better if they weren’t so eager on exploiting Bruce Lee. The story could have made it on its own if it were done right. But as it is now it’s so confusing that it’s very hard to figure out what’s really happening; who’s fighting against whom and why. I’ve seen it three times by know and I’m still not certain!

They’ve thrown in some dude called Bruce Li to make the deception complete. I wouldn’t say that he’s a very good lookalike to Bruce Lee though. You could say that this is like a bad Bruce Lee flick…without Bruce if you know what I mean. On the other hand we do have a charismatic actor playing a bad guy. If there’s any point in watching it at all it’s because of this role by Bolo Yeung during a time when he appeared in lots of movies.

Continuing on the negative path I must add that the fight scenes aren’t very good either. It’s rather bad choreographed and not very entertaining to watch. Still I will consider the effort when I’ll grade it. It still has something that makes it worth my will even if I’m not sure if I can pinpoint it. Something more than Bolo Yeung that is…

3/10

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