Bruce Lee Double Feature: The Way of the Dragon & Game of Death

The pairing of The Way of the Dragon and Game of Death in this Bruce Lee Double Feature disc makes for a very strange back to back viewing experience.

The Way of the Dragon is Bruce Lee's directorial debut. He had done other movies before, but this one he wrote, produced, directed and starred in. He plays Tang Lung who travels to Rome to help his Uncle Wang with his restaurant. Gangsters are targeting the place and Tang fights them off which just gets him targeted directly. There is a good story here and solid fight scenes. As a bonus, you get to see a young Chuck Norris here in one of he earliest roles.

It's good. It's very good, so much so that it becomes the inspiration to many martial arts and action films to follow. We only think of the plot as cliche now because so many have followed.

On the other side of the spectrum you have Game of Death. Once again, Bruce Lee wrote, produced, directed and starred in the film... sort of. You see, while making this movie, Bruce got the offer to go make Enter the Dragon, the first Hollywood martial arts film with a huge budget ($850,000) by a major studio (Warner Bros.), an offer he took and planned to return to finish it later. But Bruce Lee died after filming Enter the Dragon and before he could return to finish Game of Death.

So how exactly is there a Game of Death? Not to be stopped by the death of the star, writer, director and producer, the company picked up the pieces later, hired a director to film some extra scenes with a couple of stand-ins and then edited it together - with an entirely different plot. All in all, this is a terrible film. It doesn't make sense, and in the current age of CGI the stand-ins who look very little like Bruce Lee are downright silly - especially during one scene where the stand-in is admiring his reflection in a mirror and they decided to place a cardboard cut out of Lee's face on the mirror. The movie also tastelessly contains actual footage of Lee's real funeral during the section where his character's death is faked.

But, one thing that Game of Death did give us is Bruce Lee in the yellow and black track suit that has become the iconic image most people associate with Bruce Lee. I suppose that makes it worthwhile the horrors they wrought when piecing together this film for it's posthumous release.

The Way of the Dragon earns an A, while Game of Death earns a D at best. The result is an average set.