I Am Bruce Lee (2012)

Studio: Network Entertainment
Theatrical Release: Feb. 9th, 2012
Rating: Unrated!
Review by Craig Sorensen

I Am Bruce Lee ought to be familiar to anyone who watches cable TV.  It’s shot in the style of any number of generic TV documentaries airing on any number of stations.  I’m not saying that it’s poorly made, just kind of generic.  You’ve got a lot of talking heads cut together with some archival footage.  That’s it.  Nothing at all surprising.  Maybe if the filmmakers had shot the talking heads somewhere other than a sound stage with a plain looking background it would seem a little more inspired.  Maybe shoot them on location some where?  There are a lot of people here talking about martial arts but very little of them actually showing what they know.  I’d love to see Ed O’Neill showing off his kung fu.  I mean, if you’re going to gather together all these celebrities that have martial arts training (evidently Ed O’Neill has a black belt), why not have them show off a little?  It’d add a little dynamism to the interviews at least.  I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t in their contracts.  Maybe it would have cost them more and they just didn’t have the money.

So it seems that a majority of the film is made up of these celebrity interviews.  Beyond that though there really isn’t anything all that new here.  At this point, Bruce Lee’s life has been gone over with a fine toothed comb.  So, if you’ve seen one Bruce Lee documentary (and there are a lot to choose from at this point) you’re not really going to get anything new.  You do get new interviews with his wife and daughter which is nice.  You also get a few nice interviews with people who knew him and I always prefer that to watching random celebrities with no ties to the subject at all other than the fact that they thought they were cool (and are probably getting paid).  And it seems that a majority of the film is these random celebrities.  Maybe I’m not the target audience but I could really give a fuck what Kobe Bryant or ‘Taboo’ (from the Black Eyed Peas) think about Bruce Lee.  Or for that matter, why is Mickey Rourke and Ed O’Neill in this?  A lot of time is also spent on UFC fighters.  I mean, I get that Lee practiced mixed martial arts but I think it’s stretching a bit to say that he had a huge influence on UFC.  When the documentary sticks with the archival footage and people who actually knew the man and might have some insight, it’s watchable.  Lee definitely had screen presence and that pays off even in this format.  But when it keeps cutting back to people like Paul Rodriguez (professional skateboarder for those of you who don’t know) I just got bored.

The film does look good for the most part however.  The interview sections are well shot and lit, for what it’s worth.  Of course, a lot of the archival footage is in rough shape but I suppose that’s to be expected.  Something shot on video tape in the 70’s isn’t going to look good, no matter what you do to it.  Likewise, there’s not much you can do to old super 8 film.  There are lots of bits from his films cut into the film and they don’t really use the best looking prints.  They seem to use a lot from the American dubbed prints for some reason.  And those are usually in worse shape it seems than the original versions.  Other than that everything looks fine I guess.