adios...

Review of Goodbye Bruce Lee: His Last Game of Death (1975) by screenqueeen: 👍 2.5/5

even something so uninspired as this film's map of fight choreography manages to entertain and fascinate. this positions itself as a biopic of a sort, a kind of snapshot capturing something entirely fictionalized within the world of knowing you are an exploitation film capitalizing on Bruce Lee's image and career, by making your film an exploitation film within an exploitation film, also sort of but barely about the movie the title is pointing to. where the lines between who Lee Hon Hung is at any given point is never really clear* but the vague plot of floating money belonging to a corrupt film director (fucking shocker, i know) leading to an elaborate trap of making him fight his way to the top to get his girlfriend back is pretty clear. but oh my is it a taxing experience.

for me this peaks way early when he runs into his bruceploitation equivalent of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who does a couple basketball tricks with the box of cash Lee is transporting before attempting to fight him off. but this guy just looks really happy to be here and even though this is by far one of the worst fights in the film, this must have been the most fun one to do for the both of them. i can tell because the film is cut to fucking pieces, i think 3 or 4 splices in the same unbroken shot happens to speed up the action (or it was the result of a print that was the target of some 42nd street-esque frame thievery, lovelessly transferred to a release print or tape for immortalization onto glorious third generation magnetic tape copies), and some strategic insert shots to break up or cut away from having to have two subjects in the frame at the same time.

it's never really fun to have your editing stand in for actual fighting choreography but there's something charmingly tongue-in-cheek about how that scene feels, like the smile on that basketball player's face being in on the joke. this is by far the most interesting curiosity in the world of bruceploitation. but a lot of the time that doesn't necessarily translate to an evenly engaging experience, sadly that's the case here.

ADIOS... BRUCE LEE

*"who am i, here?"