Customer Reviews

Game of Death

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(23)
1 star:		(23)

 

 

I love Bruce Lee movies. However, when I got "Game of death", I knew that it was fake since Bruce Lee died before finishing this movie. The film was completed about six years after Lee's death. However, for the memory of Bruce Lee, I decided to watch it anyway.

Bruce Lee plays as Billy Lo who is being blackmailed by some mafia gangsters. Naturally, Billy refuses to cooperate and that makes him a target for elimination by the gangsters. Since Bruce Lee died during the making of the movie, most of the film is played by Tai Chung Kim, who performed reasonably well. To disguise the fake Bruce Lee, he can be seen wearing sunglasses, fake beards and bandages. I, however, enjoyed the fights, although they are not up to the standard of Bruce Lee.

Of course, the parts that Bruce Lee really appeared were first class. An example is when he has to fight Kareem Abdul-Jabber. Unfortunately, Bruce Lee only appears for only about 11 minutes or so.

The movie could have been made better if the plot was sensible. So my recommendation is to rent the movie and not to buy it: it is not worth buying.

one of the best martial arts movies ever made.First let me comment on something that noone else has , John Barry's music:It's fantastic and it really gives the movie an epic tone. My favorite kind of music is classical so perhaps people with different tastes won't dig it very much but that's how I feel. In particular the title sequence and the fight with Robert Wall in the locker room are incredible.The later I think is the best martial arts fight sequence ever made.Pay special attention to the final "execution scene" and the accompaniment provided by the percussion.Is it the double who appears on that sequence ??? He looks very much like Bruce Lee.As for Jabar his round kicks ( maybe that's not the proper term ) look awfully unrealistic don't you think ? Nevertheless the idea of a tower with different opponents on every floor is fantastic and it reminds me of computer games.I wonder who inspired whom ?

This is a hodgepodge of film being passed off as a Bruce Lee movie. Bruce Lee died before finishing this movie, and has less than 20 minutes of actual footage of him. The plot of the movie does not even correspond with Bruce Lee's original intentions. The parts that actually show Bruce Lee are heavily edited.

If you want to see the intended parts of the movie that were filmed before Bruce Lee's death, rent "Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey." While that is still not a complete movie, it explains his philosophy, not just flashy fight scenes.

This movie is a waste of money, time, and space.

Most Bruce Lee fans HATE this movie. They (or I should say "we", since I'm a Bruce Lee fan) note the use of very transparent doubling by Kim Tai Chung & others, the drastic change of plot from Lee's original story-line, & the use of footage from Lee's actual funeral in the film.

I understand why these fans dislike "Game of Death" so much & I respect their beliefs. However, I think these fans are reacting a bit too strongly.

There are some good points to this movie:

1. The high production values. Remember, this is 1978. Hong-Kong movies from THIS time period weren't what they are today. Jackie Chan was just starting to find his way with "Snake In The Eagle's Shadow" & with the exception of the Shaw Brothers, most Hong-Kong films from this time period were cheap, exploitation flicks. We're still a few years away from John Woo, Tsui Hark, or Ang Lee.

2. The John Barry musical score. Remember him? He's the one behind "The James Bond Theme."

3. The opening title credits by John Christopher Strong the Third. The floating games of chance, combined with John Barry's musical score give the film a "classy" action-movie feel, like a Bond film, quality-wise, that is.

4. The major American stars Dean Jagger, Hugh O'Brien, Gig Young, & Colleen Camp. Okay, this is supposed to be Hong-Kong & one reviewer pointed out that in real-life, the heads of Hong-Kong's papers & crime-syndicates would be Chinese. But again, this is 1978. Lee did want to break out onto the mainstream by working with major "American" actors. (Lee himself, of course was an American, since Lee was born in San Francisco, but raised in Hong-Kong.) "Enter The Dragon", while being an obvious James Bond swipe, was successful, not only because of Lee's great talent & charisma, but also because that film featured American stars at the time. (If you can consider John Saxon a "star", that is.)

5. The locker-room fight. No, that's not Bruce Lee fighting Bob Wall, it's doubles Kim Tai Chung & Chen Yao Po. But it still is impressive & for this scene, at least, the cutting in of clips from "Way of The Dragon" (or "Return of The Dragon") actually works.

6. The plot. Okay, some people don't like the story, but it's obviouse that writer Jan Spears based the story on the rumors surrounding Lee's death. (In truth, he died of an allergic reaction to the pain-pill Equagesic, causing his brain to swell with an edema. However, there were rumors, and that's all they were, just rumors, that he was killed by the Triads for refusing to give them a piece of his successful film-company.) The character of "Billy Lo", faking his death after an attempted murder, so that he can do battle with the syndicate, is based on the Bruce Lee MYTH. (Kind of like the way the 1957 Elvis vehicle "Loving You" is based on the Elvis Presley myth.)

I'm not arguing with the fans who hate this movie. They are fans of a true innovative genius of the martial-arts & so I can't say that they are wrong. However, the REAL script & missing additional footage from Lee's original "Game of Death" wasn't uncovered until the mid-1990's. I'm not saying Raymond Chow & Robert Clouse weren't thinking of money when they "finished" "Game of Death." (After all, the film industry is a business.) But I don't see an exploitation picture when I watch "Game of Death." Instead, I see a well-intentioned (if somewhat misguided) tribute to the genius of Bruce Lee.

P.S. To see what Bruce Lee intended for his original version of "Game of Death", watch "Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey." This documentary has a detailed rendering of Lee's script outline, as well as over 30 minutes of completed footage for the film's finale.

Regardless of what the filmmakers want you to believe, Bruce Lee completed only 15 minutes of fight scenes for "Game of Death" before his untimely death in 1973. Those exciting 15 minutes can be found in the last half-hour of this ludicrous ripoff. When will producers learn that they cannot resurrect a corpse from the cutting-room floor. It didn't work with Bela Lugosi or Peter Sellers - and it fails miserably in "Game of Death." However, the actual Lee footage is worth seeing.

This film is a disgrace like no other. Not only do they use a 'double', as well as scenes from other Lee films, but they cut out most of the fight scenes he actually shot! How do I know this? Because my brother and I saw ALL the fight scenes back in 1974. Being so long ago, its hard to remember exact details, but this much my brother and I remember...the final fight had at least 6 floors of battle. Also, 2 other fighters went into the building with Bruce, one of which you see lying dead on Kareems' floor. Of the floors you don't see...the first floor was a room full of fighters, probably around 15 guys. Another was a tae-kwon-do fighter. My personal favourite was an old man who never stood up, but instead sat cross-legged, hiding a weapon(a 3 section staff I believe) behind his back, hopping around and lashing out with it, only to hide it again. My brother says he remembers a sword fighter, but I can't recall him. There were also a lot of outdoor fight scenes shot, none of which is in this film. As for whats in this pathetic film, Bruce would never have allowed the blunder of bonking himself on the head with the nanchuka when fighting Dan Inosanto. As stated by other reviewers, this was made to cash in on Bruce Lee's name, without any care about what he actually filmed. I'm hoping this review sparks interest in the missing footage, so it might turn up in a documentary or something. I've tried to locate it with no luck.

This movie is not a Bruce Lee movie. This is not the philosophical message that Lee wanted to teach the world. This movie is more about pointless action, without a plot or story. It is true that Lee never got to finish the film, but he had a lot of footage,and what did the director do with it? He discarded it. The fight scenes have been cut short by about 5-7 minutes each.
Now tell me this, in all of Bruce Lee's previos movies, has tere been any motor bike chases? No! This movie is all about murder and action, if we wanted to see pointless murder, we would have gone and seen Terminator, or something else. Now, thanks to some great people, we can see the unfinished classic of The Game of Death on DVD. Please people, if you want to see The Game of Death, then just go buy the DVD known as Bruce Lee: The Warriors Journey. That movie has all of Lee's philosophical messages, and still a lot of action. Please people, dont buy this DVD.
P.S: They actually use Bruce Lee's Funeral Clips in this movie for a charector that dies,(Dont worry, i didnt spoil anything for you). Some of you may find that good, but i found it disrespectfull

The Game of Death is the biggest disappointment you can watch as a Bruce Lee fan. It is not even a Bruce Lee film. It is a film with a terrible story, a stunt double, Bruce Lee's face pasted on the shoulders of the stunt double (yes it is actually like a photo on someone's shoulders), sequences taken from other Bruce Lee films you have seen before and the two fight scenes filmed with Bruce Lee before he died.

So most people want to watch it for the 11 minutes of Bruce Lee where he appears right at the end. There is the nunchaku fight scene and the Kareem Abdul Jabbar fight.

The bottom line is that there is a much better way to do this than watching this train wreck. The film is absolutely chronically bad and the production should have been shelved and the fight sequences released in a documentary. That is the way this should have been done... in fact it has been done! It's called "Bruce Lee - A Warrior's Journey" (2000). If you have any sense you would get that if you want to watch this for the Bruce Lee fight sequence. It contains all of this sequence and more (outtakes).

The fight scene is a classic though, although it is debatable if it's his best. It is Lee with more experience and his styles are even wider than before. He also wears a legendary yellow jumpsuit with black stripes and cute matching shoes. The outfit appears in the Tekkan games with the character Marshal Law.

This terrible film should never have been remastered for release in the Martial Arts section of Contender Entertainment Group's `Hong Kong Legends'. It should have been omitted from the Bruce Lee box set and replaced with A Warrior's Journey.

Anyway, A Warrior's Journey is where it is at. Bruce Lee would have personally smashed this production to splinters.

For many Bruce Lee purists, there's a strong feeling that this movie should never have been made and with many stars who die before their last work is finished, it's usually a no-brainer to have that unfinished work left on the cutting room floor. With Bruce, it's different. There were just some terrific fight scenes that would've been a great shame not to see them brought to light in some form. Sure, the script and basically everything else in the movie was shoddy filmmaking, but I don't believe that money was the motivating factor in making this movie. Recent discoveries have revealed that additional footage was found revealing Bruce's original plot and vision for the movie that is way different from the movie we're stuck with. Sadly, we'll never see that story brought to life, but in today's digital age you can never say never.

The groundbreaking aspect of the film is that this is one of the first attempts that I know of at trying to complete a film with a deceased actor. The methods are laughable by today's standards, but a gutsy move on the producers part. These days with digital technology, Hollywood has been able to ressurect actors back for a few scenes in recent films such as "The Crow" with Brandon Lee and "Gladiator" with Oliver Reed. From a critics standpoint, Game of Death was a disaster, but in truth it's a well meaning attempt for fans to pay one last tribute to King of Kung Fu.

Yes, the bulk of the film is awful. However, Lee's fight with Kareem Abdul-Jabaar is one of his signiture fights. The height disparity between the two combatants obviously was a challenge for Lee to choreograph around, and he does it superbly. I think it is worth seeing the fight as part of some slightly cohesive fillm rather than as a featurette or part of a documentary. The storyline portion of the film while not great at all does at least provide a decent buildup to the last fight scene.
I recommend it for those who know what the film is comprised of and just are interested in seeing the limited Bruce Lee footage anyway. But I would not recommend it for a casual fan of action films looking to pick something out for a Friday night. For that, pick up Enter the Dragon, Return of the Dragon, Fists of Fury (originally "The Big Boss") or Chinese Connection (confusingly titled "Fists of Fury" originally." All four are worht buying, five stars, no question. This movie is an accessory piece for those who are building a complete Lee library.