"Game of Death".Bruce Lee's true vision ruined.* *1/2

David Slicer (davidslicer@hotmail.com)

In 1972,Bruce Lee was filming a movie in which he served as writer,star,producer and director of the film.He went off to film "Enter the Dragon" in 1973 and planned on finishing shooting his previous film in September of that same year.Unfortunately,his death on July 20th of that year ended those plans and five or six years after his death,his film was brought to the big screen with disasterous results."Game of Death" was the name of the film and even though the title was used for the film and we do get to see the real Bruce Lee in action,it is only during the last ten minutes of the film.Bruce Lee filmed about one hundred minutes worth of footage that were mostly outtakes or retakes that were scrapped by the actor because he deemed them to be not worthy of his standards.Twenty minutes of his film was cut by the filmmakers who took over the project and only ten minutes of it survived.These last ten minutes,although fun to watch were surprisingly accordingly to a DVD I bought called "Bruce Lee:A Warrior's Journey" were actually twenty minutes longer and the version I saw in that showed Bruce Lee in more fighting scenes with the same opponents because these scenes were longer.The first eighty minutes of "Game of Death" which was filmed five or six years after Bruce Lee's death involved using a chinese actor who stepped in for Bruce and using cornball effects to achieve that Bruce in in the scene of the film.A cardboard cutout of Bruce's face was slapped on a mirror with an actor sitting behind it to give it an illusion that Bruce was staring in ther mirror.Footage from other Bruce Lee films were spliced in the film and as a result of all the editing and messing around with the actor's true vision of the film,I found "Game of Death" to be a dissapointing but watchable experience.Bruce Lee would not have been happy to see his work ruined by those who took over his film and even though,I don't think that this is one of the finest Bruce Lee films that I have seen,I still believe that the actor in the film was just as great as in his other films."Game of Death" is not a very good film.Not because of Bruce Lee.But because his vision was ruined by a bunch of filmmakers who did not have the sense to learn that you cannot finish a film without a true master."Game of Death" would have been a lot better if Bruce Lee hadn't died.