The Intercepting Fist

Those of you who have had the misfortune to be reading my Jeffreviews for some time have probably noticed that I've been on something of a Bruce Lee kick lately. This is partly because I've had some free time at work recently, and I've been taking that time to catch up on my "Bruce Lee" DVDs. Not my Bruce Lee DVDs, mind you, but my "Bruce Lee" DVDs, those DVDs which are ABOUT Bruce Lee, but not actually Bruce Lee movies. In the past week or so, however, I have managed to get out of the house to watch some non-Bruce-Lee-related movies.

I saw Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring for the second time, because I wanted to experience it again on the big screen before it gets relegated forever to my TV set. And I was pleased to see that this showing included a nice, long trailer for The Two Towers at the end of Fellowship (but before the credits rolled), due out this December. I also saw The Count of Monte Cristo at the second-run theatre, and I saw Ben Affleck and Samuel Jackson face off in Changing Lanes. But I know how distressed you might be if I were to Jeffreview a movie you actually stand a chance of seeing, so I also bought a new "Bruce Lee" DVD, and it is this which I happily describe for you today.

As you may know, there are only four real Bruce Lee movies: The Big Boss (US title: Fist of Fury), Fist of Fury (US title: The Chinese Connection), Way of the Dragon (US title: Return of the Dragon), and Enter the Dragon (US title: Han's Island... just kidding, that's an in-joke). Of course, he also appeared in many Hong Kong films as a child actor, but these four are the only movies he made as an adult, when he found fame as a martial arts movie star. And he has since "appeared" in numerous movies and documentaries which have used old footage of Bruce Lee. This includes Game of Death, which is marketed by Fox as a Bruce Lee movie, but Bruce only appears in the 3-fight climax at the end, which makes it about as much of a real Bruce Lee movie as Fist of Fear, Touch of Death (which I Jeffreviewed recently), which uses liberal amounts of footage of Bruce as a teenager from his child actor days.

It's rather ironic that there are probably just as many, maybe more, movies ABOUT Bruce Lee as there are Bruce Lee movies. And that doesn't even include the documentaries and the ones that completely fictionalize Bruce Lee as a character, like Bruce Lee Fights Back From the Grave, and Bruce Lee Versus Gay Power (an obscure Brazilian movie, I think). Those are the Bruce Lee movies that I'm not really interested in. Basically, I collect Bruce Lee movies that are about Bruce Lee, whether biopic or documentary. And of course, real Bruce Lee movies. And then I tell you all about them.

So I just got a new DVD, called The Intercepting Fist. This is based on the name of the martial art which Bruce Lee developed, Jeet Kune Do, the Way of the Intercepting Fist. It's a documentary which, as far as I know, just came out. It's only 45 minutes long, and it wouldn't surprise me if this was intended as a 1-hour TV show. A major clue to this is a few times when the show pauses and displays the title for a few seconds. I guess that's where the commercials would have gone. The DVD is pretty bare-bones. The first thing I did was look at the extras, which are a Biography and a Trivia section. The Biography consists of 3 still screens with a total of 6 sentences:

"Bruce Lee was born on November 27, 1940 in San Francisco, California. He became a martial arts expert during his short life which ended July 20, 1973. Bruce studied Philosophy at the University of Washington. He then married, followed by his entering show business in the mid 1960's. While his acting skills were negotiable, his athletic skills seemed almost superhuman to most people. Lee's son Brandon launched his own film career in the 1990's, but died in a tragic accident during the filming of The Crow in 1993."

That's the whole thing. Not much of an extra, but it's more of an effort than I've seen from almost every other "Bruce Lee" DVD. I'm not sure what they mean by "his acting skills were negotiable," but it's probably better not to ask. The Trivia section isn't any better. It consists of 6 still frames, each with a "trivia" fact such as "Bruce Lee had two children — Brandon and Shannon" and "He was considered to be the greatest martial artist of the 20th century." This last fact is questionable, though vague enough to be somewhat defensible.

But the real point of this DVD is the documentary. Unlike Fist of Fear, Touch of Death, this is a serious documentary. And within the first 4 minutes we meet Dan Inosanto and Taky Kimura, both of whom were disciples of Bruce from back before Bruce was cool. That fact alone lends this effort some credibility. There are a lot of movies about Bruce Lee, but few of them mention his brother Peter, or Ruby Chow, a benefactor in San Francisco. Also, racial prejudice is a recurring theme in the documentary, just as it was a major issue in the 1960s when Bruce was establishing himself in the US.

The reason I got the DVD was not just because it was about Bruce Lee, but because it promised some seldom-seen Bruce Lee footage. And man, I just eat that shit up. The first shot of the documentary is an excerpt of a scene from Longstreet, the 1971 TV series about a blind detective in which Bruce made a few guest appearances, including an episode titled "The Way of the Intercepting Fist" which featured him heavily. This is the first hint that I might be getting my money's worth out of this DVD. Now, I'd be perfectly happy with a DVD that just had his Longstreet scenes all cut together, or a collection of unedited home movies. But you never get that stuff. They always cut it up, and sprinkle it in bits into a documentary. That's what I expected and that's what I got.

In addition to scenes from Longstreet, we see brief glimpses of home movies and home video of him working out with James Coburn and him demonstrating wing chun that left me reeling at his hand speed. There is also, of course, footage from his movies. Anecdotes from interview footage of people who worked with and knew Bruce abound. There are appearances by Mike James, publisher of Black Belt magazine for whom Bruce wrote some articles, former James Bond star George Lazenby, and movie stars James Coburn and John Saxon, as well as other Hollywood people you've never heard of, but who worked with Bruce on Longstreet or Enter the Dragon. They even had Tony Liu, one of the bad guys from The Big Boss (US title: Fist of Fury), and Jon Benn, one of the bad guys from Way of the Dragon (US title: Return of the Dragon). That's the first time I've seen them in a Bruce Lee documentary. And there are a couple of Hong Kong movie people who worked on Enter the Dragon who tell a cool story about Bruce knocking out some guy's teeth, after he challenged Bruce. Gee, maybe Bruce Lee: The Man, the Myth was more true to life than I thought.

One major feature of this documentary is a sizeable segment discussing Game of Death. Not the movie that Fox released which used "Bruce Lee look-alikes" to create a totally unrelated movie to Bruce's footage as the climax, but in fact the movie Bruce Lee intended to make. People who were working on the Game of Death project with Bruce, including George Lazenby who was intended to co-star, describe the concepts that Bruce had on his mind for Game of Death. It's an interesting glimpse at the movie that might have been, and might not have sucked as bad as the version Fox released.

In total, I'd have to say that this is a pretty decent Bruce Lee documentary. I would have liked to have seen it even longer. Minus credits it's barely over 40 minutes. As far as rare Bruce Lee footage goes, the home movie footage of Bruce was extremely brief, though there were a decent number of Longstreet scenes, and even a quick montage of Game of Death outtakes. I appreciated the breadth of interviewees, and would have liked to have heard even more of their anecdotes. Hey, I never get tired of hearing about how Bruce Lee knocked some guy out. Too bad they never interview the guys who challenged Bruce, who he beat up. Now that could be a cool documentary! "Bruce was a big shot, but I had been studying karate and I thought I was pretty tough... boy, was I wrong!" Nowadays it would just turn into a high-profile lawsuit.

I've read a few books on Bruce Lee, seen a few movies and documentaries about him. It's pretty tough for any documentary to reveal new facts about someone whose life is as well known as Bruce Lee's, but this one does succeed in shining a new light on Game of Death, giving it a bit of a new perspective. And it takes its job seriously, without over-sensationalizing things. Except for the part where they claim that Bruce was killed by the mysterious Touch of Death (just kidding). For a big-time Bruce Lee fan such as myself, this DVD was worth it.

© 2002 Jeffrey P. Hui