Ameriatch One of the best films i have seen

Melanie Bouvet The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

ithearod Sure, there are several vintage clips of Bruce as a child on this DVD. I may be mistaken but I believe these are available elsewhere and in better form. There are also some essentially worthless clips of Bruce Lee doing Kato, and some Bruce Li clips.Skip through all that if you like. Get to the "Dragon Lee" film, which begins near a waterfall with "Dragon" practicing. This begins one of the most surreal and satisfying bad kung fu movies you will ever have the joy to watch.There is so much to describe, I couldn't possibly contain it all here. The plot is the standard baddie doing the usual "control all the local kung fu schools" routine, but here it is being done by some *really* fake-looking Japanese characters, who mostly all sport Hitler-style mini-moustaches. Wonderful! Later in the film they bring in their "champion" who is of mixed Japanese-German descent. Perfect! There's a lot of Japan-bashing going on here.The real enjoyment of the film comes from this kind of thing: The wonderfully awful dubbing, some of the worst I've ever heard. Over the top evil giggling from the bad guys; WAY excessively long grunts and groans from injured thugs; and of course, plenty of squeals and whoops and "bucocks!" from the Bruce imitator. (Did Bruce ever really make that chicken sound? I wonder).The sets and costumes. Sets are horribly claustrophobic. There seems to be no space in the movie larger than an 8 x 12 foot sound stage, and most are even smaller. Costumes are painfully dowdy, raggedy, and crudely made, like cheap Halloween costumes.The kind of wire-work you only see in your dreams. You just have to see it to believe it.The almost total lack of back-story, or any attempt at providing a story of any kind. This movie plays out like a great Nintendo 8-bit game from the 1980's (if you know what I mean) - just tons of action. It jumps from action sequence to plot contrivance and back again, with the barest whisper of dialogue and characterization in between. There are actually one or two characters we see several times, who are important to the plot, but whom we never get formally introduced to! We know almost nothing about them, and so feel nothing at their involvement or passing. It's great, one-dimensional fun - never preachy, always entertaining.Someone in another comment here said this was a Korean production, which would suit me just fine. The film *completely* lacks that Hong Kong or even mainland-China feel to it, and it is certainly not Japanese! Looking at a film like this, made in Korea in the early 1970's, is like finding a time capsule - you see things you didn't know existed, shown in ways you couldn't have possibly imagined.The movie is like a fever dream that you just can't wake up from, and I mean that in a good way! Small, sweaty, illogical, and lots of unnecessary closeups.

gbenson20 Got the 9 movie pack with Bruce Lee and Sonny Chiba at the local Wal-Mart for $5 and how can you wrong? Looks like the company that released it cleaned up the quality somewhat from what I have seen other reviewers say about bad copies. But what was funny was they put the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen to make it appear as though it is a widescreen version but for the footage of the Bruce Lee movies he made when he was a kid, it was a full screen copy so most of the actors heads were cut off. Nice. So this "documentary" was pure crap. The bad production values aside, the editing was truly abysmal. First thing the narrator says is that they took time and care to make sure the facts were correct ( or really they just pieced some junk together and put Bruce Lee's name on it.) Then he states that they have authentic film of... nothing the sound is cut and no explanation. Oh well. So the 4 films of Lee when he was a kid is about 10 minutes of footage from each film. That's fine, but the narrator states in "Carnival" that they will show Lee doing some kung fu moves as a teen. Except for as he is about to do any of this they cut away to the next movie "Orphan Sam". So then they go into his Bio and basically skip over anything interesting. They said that Lee opened up his martial arts school and called it the "Bruce Lee Martial Arts Academy" which of course he didn't. In the background the wall reads "Jeek Kune Do". When I've only ever heard it called "Jeet Kune Do". Which is even more funny when the immortal Bruce Li footage shows him in the same exact room kicking the crap out of old out of shape extras, and he seriously misses some of his kicks and punches by 4 feet and the extras go flying across the room. So after this, with no explanation, they jump to "Bruce Lee" dressed up as Kato. 6 guys run into a building, two seconds later they run out and 1 guy has a bag with him. Lee jumps out in front of all 6 and they jump cut to them all on a rooftop and Lee is kicking the crap out of all 6. No idea what that was all about? Me neither, and the narrator gives us no reason either. My guess was that Lee would leave the set of the Green Hornet in his Kato costume and beat up guys that robbed banks in broad daylight using no weapons? They give us more footage of Bruce Li and say that no one can replace Bruce Lee, but Li is when of the best known imitators out there. So they show Li kicking some losers butts for awhile and basically rip on him for trying to be the next Bruce Lee. They gave us "the newest sensation" (or you'll never see this guy again in any movie) Dragon Lee. And that the producer found this man and Dragon Lee will be the next Bruce Lee and an international superstar. What follows is basically a rip off version of Chinese Connection. Anyway for $5 if you can grab this it is well worth the laughs. Plus the Fist of Fury is in pretty good condition and the Sonny Chiba "Street Fighter" movies are 70's Karate classics.

InjunNose There's very little of the "real Bruce Lee" in this film, its title notwithstanding. The brief clips of four of the movies he made as a Hong Kong child star ("Kid Cheung", "Bad Boy", "Carnival", and "Orphan Sam") are mildly interesting, but they don't really have anything to do with Lee's later career as a martial arts practitioner/teacher/writer and kung-fu film luminary. The rest of "The Real Bruce Lee" consists of a handful of clips of Bruce Li, the first and most watchable Lee impersonator, followed by a (way too) long mini-feature which the narrator calls 'The Ultimate Lee'. Said mini-feature stars Dragon Lee, a rather graceless Korean martial artist who was by far the LEAST adept of the three major Bruce Lee imitators! There are no credits for 'The Ultimate Lee', and I suspect that it is an edit of a longer film which has never been seen in its complete form in the United States. It appears to have been shot in Korea, rather than Hong Kong or Taiwan, and the fight choreography is--as in most Dragon Lee films--very clunky. The dubbing and sound effects are standard (which is to say terrible) for a low-budget chopsocky movie. The most laughable thing about 'The Ultimate Lee' is the narrator's claim that it was Bruce Lee's next scheduled project, and that Dragon Lee had to be brought in to replace him! Bruce Lee had already starred in "The Chinese Connection"; he wouldn't have gone anywhere near this sordid, clumsy little ripoff of his own classic film. Avoid.

Schlockmeister This movie has all the looks of a quickie movie that was made to capitalize on the death of Bruce Lee in Hong Kong in 1973. I am sure there were many , many movies like this made back then. Luckily for us, this one survives and is dubbed in English. The high points of this 2 hour film which is really a half-hour documentary about Bruce, followed by a full-length Kung Fu feature supposedly called " The Ultimate Lee" and is claimed to be the next scheduled movie was to have done ( yeah, right...). The first half-hour is where this feature shines as we see selected clips from Bruce's first four films made while he was a youngster in China. We see clips from "The Little Dragon", "The Bad Boy", "Carnival" and "Orphan Sam". Included is the only scene Bruce ever did with his father. We see scenes of Bruce behind the camera and casual. We also see scenes of Bruce's funeral. This is all very good and the collector would love to get his hands on footage like this. I will offer a caveat though when seeking this documentary out. Beware of inferior dubs. There is a video copy of this being sold that has Bruce on the cover with no shirt and with the pattern of a rising sun Japanese flag behind him ( strangely enough...), this is an inferior copy that looks like it was copied by a handheld camera with the movie being shown on a flapping sheet. The picture is out of focus a lot of the time and is very frustrating to watch, especially the rarities when you would like to see clearly. But if you can find the clear version, it is worth seeing for the Bruce Lee fan.