A friend invited me to see Birth of the Dragon, but it was not out yet, and then it was showing in some random theater at one time so no. I later saw the preview in theaters and thought that it did not look so bad, but the scores on IMDb were dreadful. I’m the kind of person that will see a bad movie and still find something to like about it. It has been a long time since I saw the biopic Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, and if Birth of the Dragon had good fight scenes, it would not be a complete waste of time so I put the movie in my queue.
Big mistake! Why couldn’t the person who made the preview, who clearly understood that the draw was Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man, make Birth of the Dragon? Birth of the Dragon is really about how some random dude with daddy issues who felt offended when Lee handed his ass to him in class decided to place his bets on the only guy who could possibly beat Lee, Wong Jack Man, and get them to fight each other until he suddenly falls in love with a slave to a dragon lady trope then decided that they needed to team up as vigilantes.
Honestly, I thought Wong Jack Man needed to get a restraining order because this guy just kept turning up wherever he went. That isn’t normal in America! Run! Dude is supposed to be broke and have a job. His financial woes clearly stemmed from his abdication of his laundry delivery duties to be a martial arts groupie! I don’t think that San Francisco is that small so it is probably not that easy to constantly bump into people. Dude is a stalker!
When dude asks the slave what she does for fun, I piped up and replied, “Try to escape slavery!” Are you for real!?! Why is he so pressed after a few minutes of conversation? Birth of the Dragon may be guilty of white washing, but even the white character gets a crap story. The movie failed on all levels. I’m not going to blame Billy Magnussen for the mess because he did a great job in Ingrid Goes West and made the most of his bit part in The Big Short. I totally don’t recall him from The East, The Meddler, The Leftovers or the film adaptation of Into the Woods so I’m not going to completely exonerate him of all responsibility, but the writers suck.
The backdrop of Birth of the Dragon is the struggle over Bruce Lee’s soul, image versus self-discovery, and thus the future of martial arts. Unfortunately it takes one hour fourteen minutes of a ninety-five minute movie for (what should have been the main protagonists) them to talk to each other without their bitch student being present instead of exchanging quips. Then they act like a buddy cop movie, which probably made viewers who know more about Wong Jack Man want to hurl, but I began to enjoy because I’m ignorant, and the movie was that bad.
Lee constantly mentions his wife, whom we NEVER SEE! It does not even look a little bit like a period movie set in the 1960s. There are occasional moments when the movie depicts Lee trying to make a movie that seem like an attempt at authenticity, but the effort is quickly abandoned. The mix of realism and fantasy is disconcerting during the fight scenes. Compare and contrast the first Charlie’s Angels versus Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. When you don’t commit to a side, you confuse your audience, but if you just commit to ridiculousness no matter how unrealistic, we’ll come with you.
Birth of the Dragon is not worth your time, not even if you go in knowing that it is a bad movie. The good news is that it did inspire me to rectify the gaping holes in my film viewing and will start watching the real Bruce Lee’s movies soon. Shame on me for this inadvertent omission!