 "Bruce Lee would haved kicked this film to Neptune. Watch 'A Warrior's Journey' instead." | 2008-03-09 |
| - Reviewed By growman |
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. |
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 "Game of Death" | 2008-01-05 |
| - Reviewed By User: A6JGSAZMGT13R |
| This film is great to me due to the fight scenes of course which i thought were well done. The actual tape recieved from this seller was in a nonworking condition however. |
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 "Nice Collectible" | 2007-10-03 |
| - Reviewed By cortezml |
If you like Bruce Lee, then you should buy this movie. I consider it a nice collectible. |
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 "laughable" | 2007-09-14 |
| - Reviewed By johnyinterpol |
| As a long time Bruce Lee fan I found "Game of Death" to be a disgrace. Bruce Lee died tragically during the production of the film and for some reason the film company decided to finish it and release it with out him. A very bad decision, because the finished product is one of the most broken and comically bad kung Fu films ever made. It's not that I'm angry that they decided to finish the film with out Bruce, but if you're going to finish a film make sure that your star is in at least half of the footage. Instead Bruce Lee is in about 10% and the rest is his body double with a Bruce Lee head pasted on his shoulder. He'll be fighting and the head will remain motionless and expresstionless, it's like a gag video from youtube. On the other hand, the 10% that Bruce is in(Not his evil pasted head clone)is classic. No one can forget his fight with Kareem and it's truly one of the most memorable fights in Kung Fu film history. The rest of the film is a painful bore. I find out fast that this wasn't really a Bruce Lee film at all. Just a poorly fabricated movie built around 15 minutes of Lee footage that only comes in at the end.I felt really cheated after watching it. For Bruce Lee fanatics only. If you're looking for a good Kung Fu flick or just a good flick in general then "Game of Death" is not for you. |
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| "All five stars go to the last half hour" | 2007-07-29 |
| - Reviewed By bradcurran |
People, people, please calm down. We all know that Bruce died before he finished GAME OF DEATH, that the storyline bears virtually no resemblance to his original intentions whatsoever, and that the whole thing with his character getting shot in the face (fortunately, NOT by a sitting Vice-President) was nothing more than a way to obscure his face until the finale (this bears a striking resemblence to the demise of Bruce's high-kicking son, Brandon.)
Let's put all that aside, and agree on two things:
1.) GAME OF DEATH, had Bruce lived to finish it, would likely have been Bruce's masterpiece, outdoing ENTER THE DRAGON, and even WAY OF THE DRAGON.
and 2.) GAME OF DEATH, as we have, should be evaluated on nothing more or less than the finale, in which Bruce's character, Billy Lo, takes on three masters of various Martial Arts (two of them, his own students, Dan Inosanto and Kareem Abdul-Jabar) in a costume that has become a certifiable icon and which pretty much solified Lee's status as real-life Martial Arts superhero (when Marvel manages to get the movie version of THE IMMORTAL IRON FIST into gear, perhaps they could combine the traditional IRON FIST costume with Bruce's tights in GAME OF DEATH.)
Those are the terms on which GAME OF DEATH should be judged, because the last half hour is the only part of the movie that Bruce can be held responsible for. And by those standards, GAME OF DEATH may well have been The Little Dragon's finest hour. |
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| "Game Of Boring" | 2007-05-17 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1KP0IVWU0RQ0A |
| This is the Martial-Arts version of "Plan Nine From Outer Space" only not near as funny. When he died, Lee had only shot part of what he hoped would be a masterpiece of Martial Arts movies. Stuck with little film and no clue what to do with it, the producers hired a kindergarten class to write a script, hired a man who looks NOTHING REPEAT NOTHING like Lee and cut the fights that were filmed and got this cinematic version of goulash.nothing about this movies is good(except for the brief time Lee is on the screen) and to add insult to injury in some scenes they actual use a cut out picture of Lee superimposed over the doubles face. Just lousy! |
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| "I am furious about this garbage...." | 2007-03-13 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2UYAFQ40U2PHS |
| This is a travesty. I remember watching it, and I liked the final sequences, where the real Bruce Lee is fighting. I actually owned a copy of it, but I got rid of it, and never thought much about it. Then I saw Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey, which goes into great detail of what the original Game of Death film was supposed to be about. I was really outraged. I still am. Robert Clouse (director of Enter the Dragon) and the producers of this steaming pile of s*** should be ashamed of themselves. This was a gross, disgusting exploitation of Bruce Lee. When you watch the documentary A Warrior's Journey, you realise that Bruce's original film was much deeper, more philosophical, and a true original. Clouse and his cronies trashed Bruce's original intentions, and made a cheap knockoff, with a double for Bruce, outtakes, even a cardboard cutout of his face! To top it off, Clouse gave himself sole directing credit, which wasn't true. Bruce himself directed all the fight scenes. Clouse directed the add on c**p. You have to see A Warrior's Journey. The director, John Little, constructed ALL of the surviving footage of Bruce Lee's original Game of Death, and the last 40 minutes of Little's film is dedicated to Game of Death. There's no narration, no dubbed in dialogue. It's all Bruce. Every print of this film should be destroyed in my opinion. It's sickening. And it's a really bad film anyway. I wish Bruce had lived to make his film, but thankfully someone like John Little had enough respect for Bruce that he constructed it the way Bruce intended.... |
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| "it is a double bruce lee ! the fans were in uproar" | 2006-11-29 |
| - Reviewed By Anonymous |
Before Bruce Lee died he worked on scripts for Game of Death (also known under some titles as "song of the knife")...and shot some 40 odd minutes of footage including test screenings and actual fight sequences.
The idea of the film was to make a multi-layer, philosophical film made for the chinese and eastern audience to ask the question over martial arts style - the advantages and disadvantages of each style, as well as questioning the need for style anyway.
The film's main plot was to be based in Korea. Bruce Lee would be forced into storming a 4 or 5 storey Pagoda which is said to hold a infinite treasure with each level guarded by a different style.
The bottom floor would be held by hundreds of Karate students (much like the ending of Enter the Dragon), the first layer would be a style under the handle of "Gate of Enlightment".
The Second layer would be the Preying Mantis with elements of Wing Chun.
The Third layer would be a Philophino style whilst the Fourth, the Temple of Gold would be held by a Hapikdo expert (though I'm not sure about this).
The Fourth layer would be the Temple of the Unknown, guarded by one Kareem Abdul Jabbar - doing an unknown style.
Whilst shooting, most of the footage was lost to the ravages of time. And when Bruce Lee died, his fans cried out for any footage to be shown as a mark of respect.
The end footage of Bruce Lee fighting Jabbar and previous footage would be cut to bits by Robert Clouse and put into a new film under the same name. The end film is offensive and shatters the whole idea of the original GOD plot and story - but then again there wasn't enough info on the film to start with.
Bruce Lee fans were in uproar...the film was a shambles, yet was commerically succesful. Most of the film had no Bruce Lee in it, or had lookalikes or even worse used Stock Footage of old Bruce Lee films and interspliced it into the film.
The DVD, whilst is good, doesn't do much to help the film - there isn't enough info on the script notes...why is there so much text, why didn't they try to recreate the scenes, the floors or even re-do the film as new?
You'd be better off not to buy either the DVD or video version unless you want to waste money or actually are a die-hard bruce lee fan. |
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| "Rip-off of Bruce Lee's unfinished work" | 2006-11-11 |
| - Reviewed By weirdo_106 |
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. |
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| "Mediocrity" | 2006-05-06 |
| - Reviewed By chingoshoe |
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.
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