By Emilio Frenk.
Director: George Nolfi
Cast: Philip Ng, Yu Xia, Yue Wu, Steven Roberts, Billy Magnussen, Simon Yin, Terry Chen, Ron Yuan, Lillian Lim and Simon Chin.
Rating: Poor.
George Nolfi, writer/director of “The Adjustment Bureau” bring “Birth Of The Dragon”, a movie that had a very interesting concept with a very poor execution.
Based in true events, the movie tells the story that focuses on a young Bruce Lee (Philip Ng) before he became an iconic figure in Martial Artist.
The movie takes place in the 60´s in San Francisco and shows Lee as a Kung Fu Teacher and at the same time a movie star.
In Hong-Kong, Master Wong Jack Man (Yu Xia) finds out about Lee´s actions. Outraged that Lee is teaching foreigners Kung Fu, Jack Man decides to travel to San Francisco to confront Lee.
Now Lee and Jack Man will square off against each other in a match were honor will be involved.
The major problem that I saw in “Birth of The Dragon” was the screenplay written by Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson.
It focused more in the character of Steve McKee, played by Billy Magnussen instead of Bruce Lee´s character. This of course doesn´t make any sense, since the movie is about the Kung Fu legend.
I felt that if the movie would have been focused in the part of Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man, I think that we would have seen a different product.
The directing by George Nolfi in terms of the action sequences he did a decent job, but the acting of most of the cast was atrocious.
I didn´t believe Philip Ng´s performance as Bruce Lee and I feel that another actor would have done a better job.
Rewrites in this movie should have been done and the writers have to be more clear in which story they were telling.
Billy Magnussen delivered a great performance in this year´s “Ingrid Goes West”, where he performed a very convincing one. That had a lot to do with the writing.
Here I didn´t buy his performance and he was supposed to be a supporting character and turned out to be a lead one.
The other part of the movie that I really had a problem was that it was not authentic and real. I feel that the movie was fake at most of the times and didn´t go straight to the facts.
The excess amount use of flashbacks was a huge problem. The opening scene of the film should have been the second one and then we would have been immerged in the conflict.
This movie had potential to be a good movie but I felt that it was all over the place and I was disappointed since I do like Kung Fu movies and I didn´t see any of it.
The climax of the film was to over the top and I felt that it was a copy of Quentin Tarantino´s “Kill Bill”.
With that being said, “Birth Of The Dragon” is one of the worst movies of this year and I cannot give a recommendation to it.