BRUCE’S DEALY FINGERS: PROOF BRUCE LEE WAS IRREPLACEABLE

With his death in 1973 the world lost perhaps the most charismatic star of martial arts. His legend continues to grow and since that time while there have been numerous stars to take on the format none of achieved the status of Lee. After his passing there were tons of imitators attempting to take on the mantle of martial arts stars but they were pale comparisons. In fact most of them were down right terrible. But their movies coming out when they did do deserve a place in film history due to the decision to use his name in every way conceivable.

The variations of Bruce Lee’s name were steady at the time. Some “stars” simply went by “Bruce” something. Then there were the variations of his last name including “Li” “Le” and more. Each actor had his hair cut to resemble the original star and more often than not there was some small resemblance in their facial features. But still they were nowhere near the expert Lee was nor had the amount of charisma he had.

Which brings us to this film. The star here is Bruce Le as Bruce. As for a plot well that gets kind of tricky. The film jumps from one item to the next and gets so convoluted that trying to understand what is happening when gets tricky. Making matters worse is when good guys fight each other because they aren’t aware they’re both good guys.

Basic plotline then. A bad guy martial arts expert and mob boss wants the “kung fu finger book” written by Bruce Lee himself. Throughout the movie he sends thugs to various places to search for the book. Then we have another story going on where a loser has a gambling debt to pay off so he tells his girlfriend to become a hooker for the mobster he owes the money to. She refuses but the mobster tells her he’s going to make her. Why she gets to the point of being placed in jeopardy because of this so called boyfriend is one of many things that don’t make sense. Not enough story? Well the girl happens to be Bruce Le’s sister and he comes looking for her. In his search he learns about the mobster seeking the book and gets involved with that as well.

The movie is filled with some of the most drawn out passive and wasteful scenes put to film. Moments of people sitting and talking but saying nothing, especially anything that moves the story forward. Scenes jump from one group of characters to another with no introduction of who they are or what they’re involvement is but they meet and fight or confront one another. Why some people are questioned while looking for the book is never explained either. It’s as if they bad buys pulled out a phone book and stuck a finger in it and decided that’s who they’d question.

To say this is a bad movie is to insult bad movies. It doesn’t even qualify as a movie so bad it’s good. Perhaps given the MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER treatment it might be bearable. As it is I would suggest it only to die hard martial arts fans and even they will be disappointed. Or perhaps if you want to collect every movie with the various versions of Bruce Lee clones you’ll want to add this to your collection. For everyone else I’d suggest something more tolerable like finger nail extraction.

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