It’s hard not to be a fan of Bruce Lee. Whether you look at the actual person, or his characters in his revered martial arts films, Bruce Lee was simply amazing. His dedication to his craft and his combination of physical and mental prowess remain unmatched. His drive and beliefs are an inspiration to many. He’s one of the few that can make just about anyone feel inadequate, and yet totally inspired at the same time.
In I Am Bruce Lee, numerous celebrities, MMA fighters, and some of Bruce’s relatives and closest friends, including Dan Inosanto and Bob Wall, discuss their memories of Bruce. Their interview snippets are set against footage of Bruce Lee during various interviews, films, and at tournaments where he performed his famous two finger push-ups and devastating one inch punch. The documentary follows the life of Bruce from the beginning and through his bizarre and unfortunate death. Previously unreleased footage in various aspects of Bruce’s life are shown, although having not seen all previously released material, I can’t speak to how much of this content is ‘new.’ Still, the recent interviews with his daughter Shannon and wife Linda Lee Caldwell, as well as Dan Inosanto are well worth watching.
There are a lot of opinions and interviewees that aren’t nearly as valuable though, including those from a variety of MMA fighters, Kobe Bryant, and Mickey Rourke, and Taboo (from The Black Eyed Peas). Their input is about as generic as it can be and I just didn’t find any value in their ‘me too’ views on Bruce and what he meant to them. Additionally, I actually didn’t know this was a Spike production until there was about fifteen minutes of the ninety minute documentary focused on whether or not Bruce was the father of MMA. Given how big Spike is into MMA, it’s really no surprise that a significant portion of the documentary focuses on MMA.
Despite a lot of fluff and forgettable material though, I Am Bruce Lee does have a lot of good content, even if you’ve seen most of it before in various Youtube clips or what have you. Bruce’s famous audition with Warner which landed him the role in Green Hornet as well as the Pierre Berton Show interview are here, although unfortunately the latter is not viewable in its entirety on its own. Throughout the documentary and also in the extra features you see plenty of scenes from Fist of Fury, Enter the Dragon, Game of Death, and others.
As for presentation quality, I don’t have any real complaints. The menu is well laid out and interesting, as while you are navigating there are a lot of clips of Bruce Lee in the background. The DTS 5.1 (or optional 2.0) audio does a fine job and the image quality is very sharp and transitions smoothly between the vintage footage and the modern day “interview” footage. There are several extra features, which are:
-Backyard Training: Bruce Lee’s Personal Films (11m28s, HD) – This is a nice collection of some black and white video of Bruce Lee and various students like James Coburn and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar training. You can see Brandon Lee running around in the back and foreground at times and there is some audio too. I hadn’t seen this much of the ‘backyard training’ before, so it was very interesting. There are some breaks in the video to allow Linda Lee Caldwell, Shannon Lee, and Dan Inosanto to talk a little bit more about Bruce.
-Inspiration: Bruce Lee’s Global Impact (3m11s, HD) – Linda and Shannon talk about Bruce’s influence and Shannon shows a medallion she wears around her neck that was designed by Bruce. Linda tells a story about her and Bruce at a tournament and a demonstration they did. This is a short feature, but worth a watch.
-Bruce Lee In Action (4m51s, HD) – This feature rolls through several of Bruce’s movies and shows him in fight scenes.
-Theatrical Trailer (1m41s, HD)
-Bruce Lee’s Hollywood Audition (9m3s) – The audition that eventually got him the role as Kato in the Green Hornet show, well worth watching from time to time.
Overall, I Am Bruce Lee is a good documentary that could have been great had it focused more on the people closest to Bruce and on the facts and not so much on opinions and input from a variety of dancers and MMA fighters.