Product Details
ASIN : 6300250172
Editorial Reviews
From Amazon.com
Bruce Lee died after shooting only a few scenes of his ambitious Game of Death, but that didn't stop greedy producers from finishing and releasing "Lee's last film," even if he's doubled for most of it. Lee planned an ambitious expression of his fighting philosophy, and his story culminates in the rigorous challenge of the "Game of Death," in which combatants take on successively greater and greater masters as they fight their way to the top of a tower. Only a few fight scenes were completed, and the released film is about a martial arts movie star who takes on a syndicate of drug dealers. Lee faces down the towering Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in an impressive battle, one of the only surviving scenes from Lee's original shoot, while outtakes from his battle with Chuck Norris in Return of the Dragon are used along with real-life footage from Lee's funeral. The rest of the film is a mishmash of car chases and clumsily edited fights, complete with awkward inserts of Lee's face. His double remains hidden behind a pair of dark glasses or a motorcycle helmet throughout, and he abruptly changes into a yellow jumpsuit for no reason other than to match Lee's costume in the final scene. --Sean Axmaker
Customer Reviews
Yep, It's Pretty Bad (2004-07-03)  "Game of Death," as you may already know, was finished six years after Bruce Lee's death with 30 minutes of Bruce Lee footage (cut down to only 11 in the final version). In the rest of the movie, the inconveniantly dead Lee is doubled by some other guys. I bet the writers wrote this movie based on how they could disguise the doubles. Doubles are seen wearing sunglasses, bandages, and even fake beards. In one classic instance, Bruce Lee's face is superimposed over one of the doubles. The plot itself is really awful and enough to make one sort of queasy, but the movie, while not for the purist, is a certifiable curio.The DVD is in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1. The picture looks bright, but a few scenes are scratchy, and the colour often bleeds. The box advertises a theatrical trailer, even showing a picture of the main menu with "theatrical trailer" as one of the options. Frustratingly, it is nowhere to be found.
DO NOT BUY THIS FILM (READ THIS) (2004-06-13)  This film is an insult to everything Bruce Lee was. And they didn't even use all of the available fight footage. Instead, pick up "Bruce Lee - A Warrior's Journey". It contains all of the original fight footage Bruce shot, along with a VERY in depth documentary covering his whole life. If you are a Bruce Lee or kung fu fan, that dvd is a must-have. Not this one.
"Game Of Death" Review (2004-06-09)  While billed as the "final film of Bruce Lee", it is important to note that this movie just splices footage from other Lee films in with both shots of a Lee double and the only actual material that Bruce recorded for the film, which clocks in at just over 20 minutes. The way that the filmmakers try to pass off a poor double as the real Bruce reminds one of the infamous Bela Lugosi "Plan 9 From Outer Space" curtain call. While the first hour or so of the movie is laughably bad, one of the big anti-climatic fights involving Bruce and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is worth every dime you put in. The jaw-dropping battle uses well-placed fight choreography as opposed to today's fancy camera tricks to make for one of the best martial arts fight routines captured on film. For those who want to know, the plot of the film surrounds a martial arts film star who fakes his death and returns to seek revenge on the mob. In a twisted sense of irony, Bruce's character is shot on a movie set with a gun that is filled with real bullets instead of blanks, the very same accident that would claim his son, Brandon, on the set of "The Crow", nearly twenty years later.
Game of Excellence (2004-03-14)  Oh, this is a great one. This is the one in which Bruce Lee fights Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Oh man, that part is great. The whole movie is good, I think. And so is the music they play during the fighting. There's this one cool part where Lee fights a motorcycle gang in a warehouse, and he hits a guy in the face with his bike! The end is excellent. Lee goes to this place and fights five martial arts masters in a row. Also, in this movie, Lee uses nun chucks for at least ten minutes. It's so great. Lee died while shooting this movie, and most of it is a body double, but it's still very entertaining. His noises are great and so is his technique. No martial artist today can compare to Lee. Watch out, though. After seeing this movie, I had a strong urge to fight people, and I did not control it. I went out and gave my neighbors a beating. They were doing some lawn work, so I hit one with a rake and used him to impale his son.
A travesty of a film, except the ending........ (2004-01-07) While watching this movie again, I actually got quite angry. I thought of all the things wrong with this turd of a movie. I thought of the greedy movie producers who say a payday in the lost footage of Game Of Death. I thought of the horrid & cheesy way they made this movie. I thought of the way Raymond Chow was responsible for this crap even though he had worked with Bruce for many years. This movie is a insult to Bruce Lee, plain and simple. This should have NEVER been made. And then you get to the last 15-20 min...... The ONLY, and I mean ONLY reason to watch (what I call) the worst movie I have EVER seen is for the last 15-20 min. It's there you get the footage of Bruce Lee fighting three enemies in the bogota that was later going to be part of the real Game Of Death. I will get to that in a bit. I would like to comment on how utterly crappy the rest of the film is. The story goes something like this: Bruce was in the middle of filming Game Of Death when he got the green light on Enter The Dragon. He then halted production on Game Of Death and went to america to make the greatest martial arts film of all time. Upon returning to Hong Kong, he went to a "friend's" apartment and laid down to take a nap. He had a headache so this friend of his gave him some asperin. He never woke up. I won't go into all the conspiracies behind his death, but the point is, he died. Game of Death was then left unfinished. Fast foward SIX years....ugh. It's 1979 and some producers get the idea to take the footage of Game Of Death that was shot and make a movie around it. What you have here is a double of Bruce playing most of the movie. It's got mostly american hollywood actors in it. It has an american director, Robert Klause (who I hope dies a painful death for directing this movie), and a terrible story. The worst part of the movie, however, is the cheesy way they intercut scenes from Bruce's other films to make it seem like he is in this movie. The double for Bruce rarely shows his full face. He hides behing huge sunglasses, even at night. They even have a scene where he gets shot in the face, has surgery, and comes out looking like a different double of Bruce!!! They even used footage of Bruce's real funeral in the movie. In the script, Bruce's fake character fakes his own death to get a crime syndicate off of his back. Instead of staging a fake funeral, like I said, they use REAL footage!! Another disgrace. There is even a scene where the Bruce double is supposed to be looking into a mirror and they have put a cardboard cut-out of Bruce Lee's face over the double's image in the frame. I have never in my life seen something look so fake and ridiculous in a movie. Especially one that was supposed to be some big budget movie of 1979. The story is utter crap. The acting is actually the best of all of his films (except for Enter The Dragon), but the actors don't fit into this kind of movie. They are all established american actors, who don't belong in a Hong Kong kung fu film. I could go on and on about how bad this movie is. It's a insult to Bruce Lee, plain and simple. I liken this to going to his grave, urinating on it, and then leaving. He deserved much better than this and it's a shame that Hollywood continued to treat him like this, even after his death. Now, after all of that.....why would I even give this DVD two stars? Well, because of the footage that actually has Bruce in it. These are the best fight scenes he ever filmed. There is one the best nunchuku battles (with Dan Inosanto) to ever be filmed. He battles Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the last stage of the bogota. It's a fun battle to watch, due the height difference between the two. I am sure many of you have seen these lost scenes, so you know what I mean. It's the only reason to watch this movie. In fact, do yourself a favor and skip to these fights by using your chapter selection feature. You will be happy I saved you that extra 1:15 hrs. of your life. Like the other DVD's of this boxed set, this disc has no special features.
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